


That Treasure House Of Memories

by StarberryCupcake



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Case Fic, Developing Relationship, Drama & Romance, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-21 10:15:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 38,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13738707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarberryCupcake/pseuds/StarberryCupcake
Summary: An accident causes Jack to lose the memories of the last 4 years of his life. Navigating a new relationship isn’t easy, especially when Jack is meeting Phryne for the first time all over again.





	1. Until we meet again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set post Series 3, possibly even post movie, for all I know. Warnings for blood, slight gore (I don't get too descriptive, don't worry) and accidents. There will be a lot more notes in the end, sorry in advance.

> _“And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sound - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, **that treasure house of memories**? Turn your attention to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance.” _

\- **_Letters To A Young Poet_** , Rainer Maria Rilke

 

It was quite the gruesome sight for that early in the morning. It was a gruesome sight independently of the time of day, but Detective Inspector Jack Robinson was reconsidering his decision of having had breakfast before going to work that morning, only to find himself re-directed to such a crime scene minutes after his arrival. 

The only thing more surprising than the early rise of murder in the city was the fact that one Honorable Miss Phryne Fisher was already there when he arrived. He was taken aback by the sight of her registering the floor of his crime scene, mostly because she was never out of bed this early, but taking in her outfit he realized she had never even gotten in it in the first place. Of course. 

“Good morning, Miss Fisher” he said to her hunched figure on the floor, looking for heaven knows what, and ruining her dark green evening gown with blood and…

He wasn’t normally a queasy fellow, but his breakfast needed more time to settle before he could look into the floor with such detail. 

“Mrs. Collins” he greeted her assistant and noticed she didn’t look quite comfortable with the scene herself “Could I ask you to help Mr. Collins with the witnesses?” he added, taking in her paleness “I believe he will need some assistance with the secretary who found him, she seems to be pretty disturbed”

“Of course” she turned around faster than he expected “Can’t imagine why…”

He looked at her retreating figure disappearing down the hallway with an unexpected speed. The girl had toughened a lot during the past years but some things were still a shock.  

“Thank you for that, I didn’t realize she was so unsettled” Phryne’s voice made him turn. 

He found her standing up, a handkerchief coated with blood on her right hand, discreetly edging away from his sight. 

“You’ve already sacrificed a gown for this case” he said, smiling “that’s admirable dedication, Miss Fisher” 

“Had you been here half an hour earlier, Inspector, you’d know why” she added, playfully. 

“Half an hour? Phryne, you need some sleep and some breakfast” 

His attention went to her face, beautiful as always, and with makeup still intact, but the bags under her eyes were a bit more prominent upon closer inspection and her stance looked slightly off, as if she was fighting the will to sleep with all her might. 

“Who says I didn’t wake up early?” she defied him, playful, and he remembered once again why he had missed her so much when she was gone. 

He sighed, with mock annoyance. 

“Alright, let me inspect the crime scene so I can get you home, to have some breakfast and sleep _ before _ we go and see Dr. MacMillan” he turned towards the gruesome scene then “If she sees you before you have some rest she’ll have both our heads”

“Why yours? You weren’t there” 

Her tone sounded tentative, as if fearing he would take it badly, the fact that she had gone out without him. They had talked about it, but it was still uncharted territory for both. 

“But what kind of a man would I be seeing you in desperate need of rest and not recommending it?” he turned to her again, a smile attempting to placate her fears. 

“Surely not Jack Robinson, the man who always does the right thing” 

Her returning smile was enough of an indication of her hesitation being gone. 

“Not always” he responded, and the scene he turned to once more silenced every kind of playful banter they could have continued with “Also, please take that to Mac as well” he added, without looking at her “whatever it is you got from the floor and ruined your dress for”

“Always so sharp, Inspector” she stood closer to him and shared the awful view of a blood coated desk where Edward Rodgers, company owner and main chairman of the Rodgers & Rodgers Factory Enterprise, had been shot in the head. 

It promised to be a long day. 

* * *

 

Phryne woke up refreshed some hours later. She had taken a cab to the crime scene that morning, after a frantic call from Aunt Prudence pleading her assistance on a case. She had just arrived home when Dot informed her of the call and she was in no state to drive the Hispano. 

She also wasn’t in the best state to check a crime scene, but she was grateful she had gotten there before Jack had, it allowed her to witness some interesting things. 

Jack had driven her home and insisted on her resting while he took care of the witnesses. He promised to wait for her to visit Mac and have a closer look at the victim at the morgue. He was being more amiable than usual with her participation on the case, probably because she had mentioned Aunt Prudence’s insistence and knew it was a lost cause to fight her on anything in it. Or maybe they were just finding their perfect balance at crime-solving. 

Their other relationship, though, was still very new. They were taking things slower than Phryne was used to, but it made it all the more interesting. She had been concerned, though, that her escapade of the night prior would be something he’d worry about, but the only worry he had was for her well-being. 

She smiled at the thought. Dear, darling Jack. 

“Miss” Dot’s voice carried through the door “Mrs. Stanley is downstairs, she says she needs to talk to you about the case” 

Well, the rest was over, then. 

“I’ll be right down, Dot!” 

Prudence was more nervous than Phryne had expected her to be. She had, after all, never heard of the victim or seen him before, which made it unlikely for her aunt to be this worried about his murder. Things seem increasingly more complicated. 

"This is bad, Phryne" her cup of tea was slightly trembling in her hand "I need you to sort this mess and prove someone's innocence" 

Phryne frowned. 

"Aunt Prudence, those two things don't necessarily go hand in hand sometimes" she knew being diplomatic with her aunt wasn't always a sucessful endeavour, but she had to try "I wil solve the case, but I can't guarantee someone's innocence without knowing..."

"He  _ has _ to be innocent, Phryne" she stated "All those people depend on that...we _all_ depend on that"

Phryne put down her tea and turned her full attention to her distressed aunt. 

"Who are we talking about, exactly?" she asked "How do you know the victim?"

"I didn't really, thankfully, our interactions were short and avoided when at all possible" she sounded upset, apparently this victim had more enemies than friends, which was always a problem when narrowing down suspects "It's his brother who I'm worried about"

"Is he a suspect, then?"

"How am I supposed to know that, Phryne?" Prudence set down her cup more forcefully than necessary "I'm just trying to act with caution around this"

"You think he _will be_ a suspect and want me to defend him during the investigation" Phryne wasn't asking, she was certain that was where the cryptic conversation was going. 

"He called me this morning, as soon as he was notified, being the next of kin, you know" her hands fidgeted on her lap, restless "He was worried that him inheriting the company would put him in a bad position and thought that I should know, in case things turned bad for him"

"Why should  _ you _ know, Aunt Prudence?" there was something Phryne wasn't entirely getting out of the conversation, and Prudence's way of avoiding certain topics didn't make things any easier. 

"David, my acquaintance, that is, is Edward's younger brother and co-owner of the company"

"The other 'Rodgers' in 'Rodgers & Rodgers', I pressume"

"Precisely" Prudence sighed "He is also an exemplary young man, and has been involved with my charities since the economic circumstances started taking their toll on the country. He is very considerate and good with his employees and strives for them to have good working conditions, and helps in whatever he can with fundraisers, soup kitchens and barter houses...his brother, though..."

"Not as charitable?"

"Edward was always interested in money, Phryne, nothing more than that" she frowned "He cared only about that which gave him a reward, charity for him was a waste of time and energy and being main chairman because of his age gave him the position to negate all the things David offered to his employees if he so chose it"

"Sounds like a charmer"

"David would never kill him Phryne, he would  _ never _ "

"And you're worried that the police may think he did"

"If he gets involved in this any further, if investors lose their trust on him as sole owner and chairman...all those people would be without jobs, the company would disappear and so would David's charity work, which is essential for us"

"Is his contribution so important to the cause?"

"It sets an example, Phryne" Prudence's expression was set in a frown "People are willing to give charity when their pockets are too full to carry more money, but when times are harder and there's no extra income to give, charity becomes sacrifice and people aren't as kind to those in need. David's help set an example for others like him and, without him, it won't be the same."

Phryne understood. Charity work for Prudence had become more difficult with the current economic circumstances, not only because of the increase of people who needed help but the decrease of those helping. And, for what Phryne could assess from the situation, things seemed to be getting worse. Everyone who had any say in their own economy knew that it was time to be more cautious than ever, since things seemed to be getting worse before they could get any better. The light at the end of the tunnel was yet too far to glimpse and people like David Rodgers weren't just scarce, they were a miracle. 

One thing seemed certain, though, Edward Rodgers had all the reasons to be a man with many enemies. And Phryne already suspected someone other than his brother. 

"I'll do what I can, aunt P" she took her aunt's hand "Jack and I will probably have to talk to David soon enough, but I'll see what I can do, don't worry"

"Wouldn't you like to talk to him alone first?" Prudence pleaded "You know, without the police making things more complicated?"

Phryne considered it. She would have, years before, without hesitation. She would have gone on her own and talked to him and probably flirted with him, because it wasn't just often helpful, it was also a lot of fun. She may do it, eventually. But the memory of Jack waiting for her to see Mac, acknowledging the evidence she found but trusting her enough not to question it immediately, taking her home after a night out he hadn't even been a part of...

"I'll talk to Jack first, he'll understand" she smiled "Don't worry about it, aunt P"

"I hope you're right, my child" 

* * *

 

"This David Rodgers sounds like an interesting fellow" Jack commented as they walked down the Hospital's hallway to meet Mac. 

"Indeed" Phryne smirked "I am meeting him this evening, Aunt P will introduce me to him"

"Sounds promising"

"I'll advice him to talk to you as well, of course, unless you want to be there..."

"I'm sure you'd tell me if there was something I needed to know" he smiled and opened the door for her "Like that thing you picked up from the crime scene and hid all this time for whatever reason, which you are about to show us, I trust"

"That sounds like tampering with evidence to me" Mac put down her coffee, presumably the third one that morning, to greet them "You should have her arrested immediately"

"Talking from experience, Dr. MacMillan" Jack smiled to her "That is more trouble than it's worth"

"You know, this friendship thing you two have going on since I left" Phryne frowned at them both "It'd be adorable if it wasn't always at my expense"

"Well, considering the lives you make us lead, it's half friendship and half group therapy"

"Very funny, Mac"

"Could we focus on the case, please" Jack insisted, interrupting "We have a clear suspect and I feel this case will close easily enough, thankfully"

"You do?" Phryne turned to him "And you didn't think of mentioning that when I told you about meeting the victim's brother?"

"You seemed rather excited about that" he smirked "I assumed you could use the excuse anyway"

Phryne answered with a sufficient smirk of her own.

"Well, turns out that my evidence  _ tampering _ will probably ruin your perfect theory" she added "Because if you're going to accuse whoever shot him, you're absolutely wrong" 

She opened her purse and took a handkerchief, which was enveloping another, slightly bloody one, and inside it was a piece of porcelain, a curved edge holding what seemed to be half of a handle. 

"Mac, have you tested the victim for poison?" Phryne asked, looking at Jack as if she had leverage. 

She loved proving him wrong. He loved seeing her in that state of thrill that the upper hand on a case gave her. But it wouldn't be fun if he didn't try to win as well. 

"Of course I haven't" the doctor frowned at her friend "the lad was shot in between the eyes and was coated on his own blood, why would I test for poison if you don't notify me?"

"I can't notify you if I am to make a scene and blow your minds"

"Of course" the doctor sighed. 

"So you found a piece of a cup on the floor and that makes you think he was poisoned before being shot?" Jack observed the  _ stolen _ evidence carefully.

"Remember when I told you that being there early had proven to be useful?" she sat nonchalantly on Dr. MacMillan's desk as she spoke "I saw a girl scurrying away with something she had picked up from the floor. Young girl, dark hair, rather simple and battered clothes, very swift, I would have missed her if it wasn't for the scarf."

"What scarf?" Jack cocked an eyebrow. 

"Whatever she was picking up from the floor, she put in a scarf, one that seemed much nicer than her clothes, a very exquisite silk number that looked like it had some early century vibe to it. I saw her from the hallway and wasn't able to catch her to register her, and I also didn't want to alert her of my suspicion, in case she made a run for it before you arrived. So, I did what any reasonable person would do..."

"Crawl under the desk where a man had just been shot to death and register the bloody floor in an expensive evening gown" Jack finished for her. 

"Which got me that piece of evidence. She was picking up the pieces of a cup."

"And that leads to poison because...?"

"Why would she want to hide it otherwise? Nobody would even think of testing for poison with the man having been shot in the head, but she seemed eager to take the pieces out of there, as if they would give it all away." 

"I could test for poison but he clearly died from the bullet" Dr. MacMillan said "He was shot at a short distance with incredible accuracy, with a.38 revolver"

"I hear those are the worst" Jack smirked at Phryne.

She smirked back and Mac sighed at them. 

"Whoever did it was in the office with him, not too far from the target, and has an impressive aim, it was a very clear shot" she concluded "I'd say he was murdered last night, sometime around 1 am"

"Which is why I have a perfect suspect for it" Jack added. 

" _ Had _ a perfect suspect" Phryne corrected.

"The night shift cleaning assistant, the sole possible witness for this, had been dismissed the prior morning, after what appears to have been a heated argument in which she allegedly attacked the victim, and her husband is an ex army mate of his" he didn't have as much evidence just yet but was sure this was the thread to follow on this case "Mr. Thomas Osmond, I'd say, is our likely killer"

"I'm not so sure about that" Phryne challenged "I'll ask David about my scarf girl in our meeting, as well as Mr. Osmond. I know she has something to do with this"

"Alright, you both do what you've got to do, I'll test for the poison, see what we get from there" 

"Thank you, Mac" Phryne got down from the desk and walked towards the door "Now, if you excuse me, I have a very delightful bachelor to interview" 

"Good luck!" Mac smirked, knowingly. 

"I don't need it" Phryne winked. 

Jack sighed. It was proving to be as long a day as he had feared.   

* * *

 

David Rodgers was, indeed, delightful. In a sort of innocent, naive way.  He was charming, as Phryne had anticipated (Prudence was unaware of the fact that the attraction towards charming men was a family trait that she wasn't immune to, although she liked to pretend that she was), but he wasn't conceited or standoff-ish. His care for people seemed genuine enough and his understanding of his position in the case was reasonable from the start. He also seemed rather flustered with Phryne's attentions, which made him somewhat adorable. Phryne was already having fun on this case. 

"I called Prudence because I knew my position here is complicated" he explained, avoiding Phryne's piercing gaze "And I wouldn't want that to ruin her admirable charity work" 

"Do you have any idea of who might have wanted to hurt your brother?" Phryne asked and his returning shy smile was unexpected.

"Pretty much all of Melbourne, probably" he answered, honestly "He was a bad employer, didn't treat our people well and it only got worse with the current economic circumstances. He tried getting bigger profit by investing the less possible and his business was always advantageous only for himself. It made for a great business plan but reality is more than that, I reckon"

"Did he have any particular incidents at the factory? I heard he had just dismissed an employee after a fight" Phryne inquired, more in a camaraderie tone than as part of an investigation. 

Her capability for delicacy was what normally got her ahead of the police, and one of the things Jack recognized the most from their partnership. He should be thankful that she had inquired about his suspect before hers. 

"Yes, nasty business that was" David sighed "She got violent when he dismissed her, or so he and his secretary said, but I'm sure there must have been reason"

"You don't sound surprised"

"In the times we're living, dismissing someone from a position is a delicate matter and Mrs. Osmond was fairly new at the factory but her husband had been with us for a year or so, he was Edward's old army mate...I think a superior, actually" David blushed "Edward took him in less for charity and more for the fact that he could remind himself of how he was the superior now" 

"Charming" Phryne frowned. 

"Yes, Edward was..." 

At David's inability to find a proper ending for that sentence, Phryne continued. 

"In an unrelated subject, I was meaning to ask you, I saw this young girl when I arrived at your brother's office this morning..." she tried to sound unaffected, she didn't want to give anything away yet "Brown hair, wavy, she was wearing this beautiful scarf and I wanted to ask her where she had bought it, to get one myself, you see" 

David smiled at that, relaxed with what he thought was a change of subject. 

"That might be miss Dennigs, Anna Dennings" he said "She wears that scarf every day, says it's a memory from her late mum...she's an orphan, poor thing, family died in a fire" he spoke with fondness "I got her the job, after much insisting, she's very young and seemed so desperate..."

"Desperation seems to be the common state, nowadays, I'm afraid" Phryne offered. 

"I just hope this can be solved" David sighed "I wouldn't want all those people to lose their jobs at a time like this..." 

Phryne took David's hand in hers. This poor man seemed really conflicted. Maybe Prudence's instinct wasn't wrong this time. 

"I promise we'll do our best to solve this, David" she said, with sincerity. 

Jack and her had a lot of lives at stake in this one. Mistakes weren't an option. 

* * *

Night was quickly falling when they decided to retreat to Phryne’s parlor. Hugh had remained on the scene, gathering the last details, and the rest of them had opted for some quiet time to gather their thoughts, possibly with a drink. It was going to be a complicated one, not only because of the suspects but also because of how much there was at stake. 

Phryne couldn’t help but keep going back to Miss Dennings. She knew her instinct was trying to tell her something and even if it caused an argument with Jack about the dichotomy between solid evidence and instinctual hunches, she wanted to pursue the matter further. 

She would be able to think much better, though, if her back and neck weren’t entirely sore out of all the crouching and crawling she had done at the crime scene at ungodly hours. 

“I don’t know how I’ll be able to sleep, I feel too sore” she tried massaging the back of her neck but it was futile.

“Age doesn’t forgive anyone, does it?” Mac smirked and Phryne had to admit she had served it on a platter for her with that one.

“Watch it, Mac” her frown was much fonder than she’d intended. 

“Let me help” Jack offered, sitting beside her on the settee “I’d like to say that I’ve learned a few tricks from my bike riding days but I leaned most of them for garden work needs”

“Well, a garden can be exciting” Phryne smirked, offering her back to him “it was the home of sin, after all”

Jack's hands roamed her back expertly and she felt all of her muscles relaxing immediately. She could sense his proximity all around her, the heat between them comforted her. She sighed, leaning towards him even more. Phryne was, by then, well acquainted with Jack’s hands and the things they could do, but this was a new and very interesting development. The man was a gift. She closed her eyes when his hands caressed her neck with tender care. 

"Sir, I think we might have a problem" Hugh Collins's voice traveled faster than he did, something he had started doing with the purpose of announcing himself as to avoid interrupting them whenever they were together, heaven knows doing what. 

He thought he was subtle about it. He never was, the poor thing. 

"I'm surprised we have just one, at this point" Jack answered, removing his hands from her back. 

And that would most definitely  _ not _ do. 

"Jack Robinson, don't you  _ dare  _ take your hands off of my body"

There was a second of stunned silence in the room before Dot cleared her throat nervously. 

"Well, I'm gonna need another drink for this" Mac stood up and walked to the table, attempting very poorly to hide a smirk. 

"Make it two, please" Jack added, his hands still removed. 

Exasperated, Phryne decided to take the matter into  _ her own  _ hands, grabbing his and enveloping herself in his arms, leaning her back on his chest. If he wasn’t going to continue with the massages, the least he could do was make her comfortable.   

"So, what seems to be the problem, Hugh?" she asked, her head leaning back on Jack’s shoulder. 

"Well...there's...uh..." he opened his notes and stared so intently at them that he might have manifested a hole through them with just a bit more intensity "There seems to be another suspect with some compromised alibis, so this case is not as closed as we may have thought at first"

"You mean Miss Dennings, don't you?" she leaned her head on the crook of Jack's neck, his cologne like a comforting blanket over her. 

"How did you know?" at that, Hugh looked up, momentarily forgetting the display before him, to later avoid her gaze intently again. 

Dot seemed to be amused by the reaction, which was always a plus for Phryne. 

"Well, I did find poison on the victim and traces on the cup, so Phryne might have been right about that one" Mac added "The bullet definitely killed him but the poison would have as well, had it run its full course"

Phryne smirked, pleased with her instincts not letting her down. 

"I think we should make a bet, don't you Jack?" she decided, nonchalantly "I put all my chips on Miss Dennings, you put yours on Mr. Osmond, and we'll see who wins"

"That sounds like a recipe for disaster" Mac knew full well that she was going to end in the middle of a confrontation. 

Again. She was a better friend than they both deserved. 

"What would you get if you win?" Jack already suspected her, of course he did.

She didn’t have an ulterior motive aside from just spicing things up. They had been working in many cases as of late and anything to make the matters less dreadful, to prevent it all from taking a toll on their lives and their relationship, was a welcome option.  

She removed herself from Jack's embrace and turned around, her face close enough to his to stare intently into his eyes. 

"Your handcuffs" she answered, not even blinking. 

"For detective duties?" he inquired, a half-smirk almost imperceptible on his face.

She was close enough to see it, though. She smiled. 

"I am versatile" she offered "What do you want if  _ you  _ win? unlikely as it may be..."

His eyes never strayed from hers, his body far enough not to touch but the electricity between them was like a magnetic current drawing them together.

"I'll think about it" his smirk was evident then, and she knew he loved playing the game as much as she did. 

Maybe even more so. The man was a gift. 

* * *

 

Phryne woke up and felt his arms still around her. She loved Sundays. He felt her stirring and brought her closer, her back on his chest and his hands caressing her arms. She smiled. 

"Good morning" she felt his lips kissing the back of her neck as a response, too tired to answer with words. 

She loved it when he let his body do the talking. He was incredibly good at that. Unexpectedly good. 

"Breakfast in bed?" she asked, her back still to him. 

His answer was hidden in a whisper sketched on the skin of her shoulder. It was unfair how responsive her body was to his. She shivered. 

"You'll have to let me go so I can ask Mr. Butler, you know?" she smirked "Who would have thought you'd be so clingy"

He retreated at that, giving her too much space, and she regretted her words. It was somewhat new, this line between playful banter and serious talk when in such intimate moments. She wasn't used to so much domesticity in her shared mornings, even less so with this level of...consistency. Of routine. She feared routine and he was practically made of it. 

"Well, now I'm cold" she tried, halfway a joke and halfway an apology. 

He turned her tentatively then, his hand caressing her hair out of her face. 

"How inconsiderate of me" his voice first thing in the morning was an experience on its own, Phryne decided. 

"Dreadful" her smile was genuine and she enveloped him in a tight hug. 

His hands on her hair were delicate and soft and she felt content  and at ease. If this was to be their Sunday routine, she could get used to it. 

"Good morning, Phryne" his lips drew her name on the top of her head. 

"Good morning, Jack" hers did the same over his heart. 

* * *

 

"I tend to take my Sundays off" he said, as he let her drive them, her speed picking up in a concerning way "But I am well aware that you won't shut up about it all day if we don't check this"

"So you're indulging me?" she smirked "You have absolutely no interest whatsoever on following this lead today?" 

"I may be somewhat curious" he admitted, and her sultry smile was worth the response. 

"I know you're keen on blaming Mr. Osmond..."

"I'm not  _ keen _ on it, Miss Fisher, I'm merely following the most evident leads..."

"But you have to admit that this situation of Miss Dennings's address not matching up is suspicious"

"Hardly a cause for murder"

"David seems certain that she's an orphan and her family died in a fire"

"Our good, generous David..."

"If she's lying, then she got the job out of false pretenses and there could be something there"

"You think Edward found out?"

"Maybe...or maybe it's something else" she sighed "You didn't have to come with me, you know"

"And miss the chance to see my odds in this bet increase? Unlikely" 

"You still haven't told me what you wanted if you won, even if there's no way you will"

"Patience, Miss Fisher, we'll get to that  _ when _ I win"

Her reply was silenced by the roar of the Hispano coming to a stop in front of a vacant slot on the location Collins had given them as belonging to Miss Dennings's home address. It was evident that she had lied to her bosses. Why she had done so remained to be seen. 

Jack should have known better than to doubt Phryne's instinct. 

They didn't find anything looking around and nobody who lived in the area had seen or recognized Miss Dennings by name or description. 

"I'll have to bring her to the station" Jack concluded, after an hour of asking neighbors and finding more questions than answers "I already have Mr. and Mrs. Osmond scheduled for tomorrow, as well as the secretary who found the body"

"You should have David over as well" Phryne walked towards her car with grace "We should question him further about how well he knows the people who work for him"

Jack sighed, taking his seat beside her. 

"Is there anything I should know?" he looked at her, unable to find how to convey what he was trying to ask "About yesterday's meeting?"

"I told you everything of note" Phryne answered, confused. 

"I don't mean about the case, I mean...anything else?"

"I'm not following"

"Anything else I should know about you and him?"

Phryne turned to him then, her eyes firmly on his, a scorching fire keeping him locked in place. He was still somewhat afraid whenever he had her full attention, even if he also relished in it. 

"You're asking me if I slept with him? During the interview?"

Jack faltered.

"What? No! That's not what I meant!"

"Then what?" Phryne sounded upset and Jack was starting to understand how out of place it all seemed. 

"It has happened before that I've had interviews with suspects that you had already talked to and there were things that caught me off guard about your relationship with them" he tried to explain "like Warwick Hamilton or Compton or that Voigt fellow who made wine and Guido..."

"Alright! I get it!" she frowned "I didn't know you were keeping count" 

"I didn't mean to offend I just..." Jack covered his face with his hands "I don't know how to approach this and I'm worried that I'm failing you"

Phryne was silent. Jack didn't know if it was a good thing or a terrible thing. He was also afraid to look at her. But he uncovered his face, as unprepared and hesitant as he was. 

"I understand that what we're doing is complicated" she said, unsure "and that I'm asking a lot from you"

"I..."

"I  _ am _ " she interrupted him "I promise you that if I go any further than mere flirting with other men, I will talk to you about it first" she took his hand "And we'll decide when the time comes, step by step, what we will do about it" she was shaking "That's what I can offer, that's all I can give you for now, and if it isn't enough, I understand"

There was a hint of hope in her voice, a wish for it to  _ be  _ enough. 

"It  _ is _ " he grabbed her hand "I can promise you to be just as honest and tell you how I feel...I don't want you to change for me, Phryne"

"I know" she smiled "And I don't want to hurt you"

"We'll find a way" 

"We always do" 

* * *

 

Phryne started the Hispano and they took off through the sketchy streets of the neighborhood. Jack had argued about the use of such a fancy looking car to visit the location, and Phryne had to admit he was right when she noticed a car trailing them. 

They couldn't tell much about the big black vehicle, but it was gaining speed as it drew closer to them. It didn't take long for Phryne to start maneuvering the Hispano with less finesse than usual: they weren't trailing them, they were  _ chasing them down _ . 

Phryne had the advantage of a stellar vehicle and being a masterful driver, but the pursuers had clearly a vast knowledge of the area, and having appeared by surprise, trailing them so close, made them more able to manipulate Phryne's driving to their needs and trap them where they wanted them. 

But Phryne wasn't giving up without a fight. When the vehicle veered to trap them in the entrance of an alley, she turned to face them with such speed that the chasing car didn't have time to react properly. They knew the streets but Phryne drove the Hispano as if it was another limb. They stood, engines roaring, face to face. 

What she didn't count on, though, was on their fear. And fear pushes people to do unimaginable things. 

The driver, Phryne noticed when she could vaguely see him through the dirty glass, had panic in his eyes and he didn't pull back. He crashed them, intently, with all the might of his bigger vehicle, with all the adrenaline that fear had drenched him in. 

Phryne felt the impact as if she was crashing the world itself, as if it had ceased spinning and left her breathless, hanging on the wheel for dear life, her forehead colliding with it. 

She felt the universe turning dark, the smell of gasoline and burned rubber lulling her to sleep. She closed her eyes, faintly, and heard men shouting, but couldn't understand what they were saying. They were probably running away. 

She was slowly drifting off to sleep. She hoped Jack would wake her up later...Jack...where  _ was _ Jack?

She ordered herself to open her eyes, to fight through the nausea and the throbbing pain of her body and her head. When she looked at the passenger seat, she saw no one. 

Thinking that Jack might have been possibly chasing the men down, she moved towards the door. It took immense strength to stand, every inch of her body aching. The broken glass and pieces of metal from the crash as well as the gasoline dripping from the vehicles made it impossible for her to leave her heels behind. 

One look at the Hispano was enough to make her stomach drop. It was  _ destroyed _ . It was dripping and falling apart like a corpse in the middle of the alley. She wanted to cry. But it wasn't the time. She had to catch up with Jack. 

She was about to make her best effort to start running when a lonely fedora on the sidewalk caught her eyes. 

No. Not that. Anything but that. 

Her body moved by sheer panic, she couldn't feel anything anymore. She rounded the crash site and hoped against all odds that she wouldn't find him there. 

But there he was. 

Jack hadn't pursued. He had flown through the windshield, or maybe through the door, either when she veered or when they crashed them, at some point in the eternal seconds between the last time she'd looked at him and when she found him, he had been sent flying out of the car and to the street. He had landed on the pavement. His head was bleeding. 

She ran to him, fearing the worst, and examined him with trembling hands. She needed to keep calm. She needed to be steady. He shouldn't be moved forcefully. She knew all this. She had been a nurse, she had seen worse, she had to stay calm. Jack  _ needed _ her to stay calm. 

His heart was beating, but not as fast as she'd want it to. It was  _ something _ . 

Time was of the essence. 

People started gathering, probably to see what all the fuss was about. She wouldn't remember how she was able to put together whichever words she needed to ask for help, for them to phone the police, for them to call for Hugh and Mac. She also wouldn't remember the faces of the women who helped her tend to Jack, makeshift nurses in the face of chaos. 

All she would remember was the panic in her body, Jack's blood on her hands and the smell of gasoline. 

* * *

 

Mac reassured her that he was going to be fine. That he would wake up. That they had been just in time. That the crash was terrible, that he was bruised and battered but that he was going to be ok. 

Seeing Jack lying down for hours, though, was not reassuring in the least. She felt responsible for this. It was her car, her driving, her idea what got them in that situation. He insisted on not going, on not taking the Hispano, on her driving being too...

But no, she couldn't do this to them. She couldn't start on a spiral of self-pity and guilt. This case wasn't just a matter of Aunt Prudence's friends or of innocent families anymore, it involved people attempting to kill them. She had to focus. For both of their sakes. 

"Phryne" Mac's voice cut off her thoughts with urgency "You need to come here, he's waking up"

She reached Jack's room with a speed she didn't know she had. Mac was close to him, indicating things to nurses and using that professional strength she had that Phryne needed so much at that moment. 

Jack's eyes were opening slowly, his frown a sign of his sure confusion. Phryne felt as if she had been holding her breath ever since she had seen him on the pavement and she had released it only upon seeing him wake up. 

He looked around, as if he was searching for something...for  _ someone _ . She moved towards the bed and took his hand in hers.

"Jack, it's ok, you're ok" she reassured him, trying to keep her voice steady.

"Inspector, you had a nasty hit, do you remember what happened?" Mac took the lead, a chart in her hand and her professional tone reassuring Phryne somewhat. 

"Where am I?" he asked, still confused "Why am I here?" 

"You were involved in a car accident, can you remember anything about it?" Mac continued, frowning. 

"No...I..." he looked at Phryne then, but he seemed confused, disturbed, like miles away. 

He took his hand away from hers. He looked up again, to Mac, a plead in his eyes.

"Where's Rosie?" he asked, pain and confusion in his voice "Where is my  _ wife _ ?" 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi yes this is a lot longer of a chapter than I intended and it's ridiculous because it could have been split in like 3 smaller chapters. The thing is, I needed to get exposition kind of out of the way, I had to establish more or less where Phryne's and Jack's relationship was at this point and I also already told y'all that this was a memory loss fic and if I didn't introduce it here, it kind of would have dragged really badly. I mean, as a reader, I would have been put off by that, possibly. So the result ended up being a super dreadfully long first chapter that I hope you all didn't hate and that I acknowledge could be smaller chapters but in fics some elements of surprise are not possible when you have to tag them. 
> 
> I want to take a moment to say that this fandom is absolutely fantastic in every way because you all have done research by making posts on timelines, Phryne's relationships through the seasons and did I mention timelines? Good god I don't know what I would have done without the amazingness of this fandom's resources on tumblr. You all deserve love and appreciation. 
> 
> I have been reading the books but this fic is mainly based on the show for various reasons, as well as it isn't influenced by Kerry's style of writing, so it's its own thing. What I am keeping from the books are a couple of characters you see in the tags, but I'll interpret them a bit freely, I hope it isn't too bad. 
> 
> Since the relationship and the whole memory situation was the core of the fic, the case isn't so much a mystery as a situation of perspectives and justice, so don't expect me to pull a Poirot and blow your socks off with an unexpected reveal, I'm sorry about that. This is more about people than case mechanics (young me watching Detective Conan after school would be very disappointed). 
> 
> I seem to be using this fandom for personal challenges, but take that as a compliment, because it means I trust you won’t completely hate me if I utterly fail. I hope. I began this endeavor by writing small snippets of scenes as they came to mind and ended with an entire document of organized notes and resources with parts and sub-parts and I guess that’s just how I am tbh. Let’s hope it’s as much of your liking to read as it is for me to write. 
> 
> I'll leave all notes about memory loss, my reasons for using it as a trope for this fic and other stuff for another chapter. I hope you're liking this so far, I can't promise when the next installment will be up, but responses and comments would help me a great deal to know if I'm not utterly failing so far. 
> 
> This is unbeta'ed and I'm not a native English speaker so I hope it isn't too bad and all mistakes are my own responsibility. Thank you so much for reading!!!


	2. Puzzle pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "They weren’t both strangers as they had been when they met. This time, only she was a stranger."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, look at that, it's an update. All the extensive notes on this chapter will be in the end. There will be mentions of injury, head trauma and all that comes with that, nothing graphic but it's there. Also, prepare yourselves for some angst.

Phryne visited Jack in the hospital constantly. Talking to him was...complicated. She was confused as to how to approach him, especially considering the hesitation with which he addressed her, so most of the time she talked to Mac instead. 

What she definitely did  _ not _ do during those days was tell him about their relationship. 

Mac had suggested that they had to go slow with the onslaught of information Jack was missing. She told her that he had a severe concussion and presented some expected signs, like difficulty staying awake (something Phryne knew Jack would be very upset about), vomiting, a dreadful head injury but, fortunately, nothing that would require surgery. She said he could have been in a coma for much longer, so Phryne understood that, as bad as the situation seemed, it wasn’t the worst it could have been. 

As for the state of his memory, Mac said there weren’t concrete answers, but retrograde amnesia was expected with head injuries of this magnitude, which affected the recent memories rather than old ones. Jack remembered his childhood as well as he had before, he remembered his police training, his wedding, the war, the police strike of 1923. He remembered he was an Abbotsford fan, that he liked mustard pickle sandwiches, that he hated operettas. He remembered Rosie. 

But the last three to four years of his life were completely gone. 

Mac insisted that it could have been much worse, considering what she’d seen in the War. To Phryne, though, it wasn’t the amount of time what troubled her, it was which period of time in particular. 

The entirety of their acquaintanceship had been lost in that car crash. 

According to Mac, it could have been because of the emotional attachment to the memories. Which was damn ironic, if you asked Phryne, but she wasn’t about to argue with science when she knew she’d lose. Emotions were, apparently, extremely important to this, and any pulling into the wrong direction could influence Jack’s process of recuperating. 

“Emotions can influence our memory” Mac explained “We attach feelings with our memories and they’re ingrained with them, shaping them them more than we think” 

Mac took Phryne’s hand, her professional demeanor gone, only her best friend present, a best friend who could see her grieving something that had only just begun.

“Even if that might have been a cause for how much he lost, it can help him get it back as well” she assured. 

Mac insisted on that since day one, that there  _ was _ a chance for him to get the memories back, maybe partially, but not by overwhelming him with anecdotes. Mac suggested that easing himself into a case may be, ironically, a good way to get his brain back to working how he used to. 

Phryne, however, didn’t know how much to trust her own emotions. She felt drained, as lost as Jack was, so she kept silent towards him, hoping she would eventually find the way to re-introduce herself in his life. 

They weren’t both strangers as they had been when they met. This time, only she was a stranger. And every time Phryne got closer to understanding why that hurt her so much, she pulled back, not wanting to know. Not wanting to be burned even more than she already had. 

Considering the time lost to him, Jack wasn’t completely surprised when Mac explained why Rosie hadn’t shown. The divorce didn’t come to him as a shock but it did hurt him all over again, Phryne could see that. Having Rosie shown up to help him ease the blow would have been even worse, considering not only the matter of the divorce but the entire case of her father, Jack’s mentor, and what he had done. Jack didn’t need those memories just yet. 

When it came to Phryne, he seemed at a complete loss. Not even in the earliest moments of their acquaintanceship had he been so distant towards her. Or maybe he had been, but Phryne was oblivious to his rejection since she took the opportunity to be playful and witty. Now it just  _ hurt _ . 

There was no way a man who suspected of her whenever she crossed the threshold, who had asked Hugh if she was lying when she said to be his working partner, would accept the kind of relationship they had. 

His last memory of a relationship, after all, was a marriage he had tried to salvage at all costs, a marriage that was as proper, as traditional as one could find. Things with Phryne were so different from what he was used to, from what he had always thought he wanted, and from what  _ she _ was used to as well, that even nearing the subject was impossible. 

So Phryne swallowed all of her feelings, all of her emotions, all of her memories. Everything Jack didn’t have anymore seemed to have multiplied on her, as if she had to hold all that emotional baggage for both of them. She was content to talk about the case with him, sharing everything they knew, not keeping anything from him, as she sometimes did when they worked together, hoping that maybe something would remind him of how they fit together while working on a case. That maybe a small detail, a little gesture, a faint recollection would put them back on track once more. He just listened, regarding her with a distance she had never felt from him before. 

By the time Jack came out of the hospital, their case hadn’t advanced, their suspects were scattered and their relationship didn’t exist anymore. 

* * *

Jack insisted on going to his house alone. He wanted to be with his thoughts, away from doctors, nurses, police officers and, more than anything, that unusual lady detective he was apparently working with. 

She had been respectful and cordial, but he felt like she was hiding something from him. He wasn’t sure if it was about the case they were working on, about the car crash itself or something else. Jack might have lost some years of his life but he hadn’t lost his investigative instinct. He could tell when someone was holding something from him. 

His home seemed small and orderly. He could tell it was his own right away, as if he was a shape meant to fit perfectly in that space, outlined for him. It seemed very lonely and very cold, but he assumed that was what a divorce felt like, after all. He kept instinctually looking for traces of Rosie, of shared life, but all he saw reflected back at him was his own self. 

His books, his sofa, his coat, that much he recognized. The scent of shoe polish, of old paper, of chopped wood in his fireplace. 

That was, until he entered his bedroom. 

He was immediately invaded by her perfume. It wasn’t overwhelming, but it lingered. He thought that it was in the air, but upon further inspection found it clinging to his pillows, the sheets, and then found the small bottle in one of the bedside tables. 

He knew it was hers. Miss Fisher's. He recognized it from the hospital, an oasis of floral blends in the midst of the sterile room. 

It wasn’t the only indication of her presence on his space. There was a satin robe, black with a delicate flower pattern, hanged in his wardrobe, next to his coats. A deep red lipstick was placed in the bathroom sink, close to the mirror, like a bullet tearing the white of the room in half. A pair of pearl earrings were left near the bathtub, as if she had forgotten them there, after having taken a bath. 

They were signs of a life together. Of companionship. It didn’t seem like a rushed one night stand or a torrid affair, it seemed homely and domestic. It felt intimate, in a personal way, not a merely physical manner. It wasn’t like his marriage, where his things and Rosie’s had been separated between “his” and “hers”, so clearly divided he knew it must have been easy to split them whenever they had separated. This wasn’t that, it wasn’t them sharing a space by boundaries, it was him opening his world for her to come in and settle in it. 

He felt like working on a puzzle of someone else’s life, the detective of his own past. And the more he learned, the more it overwhelmed him. 

This was what she was hiding. But  _ why _ . 

He decided to put some comfortable clothes on, brew some tea and read a book he remembered, something familiar, to try to empty his mind from the onslaught of feelings the situation was making him face. He would probably sleep on the couch, away from her perfume. From her ghost. 

It was when he opened one of his favorite volumes, a compilation of Shakespeare’s works, and dozens of letters and telegrams with her name on them flew out, that he understood how deep into her he might have been for those past mysterious years. 

* * *

“Good morning, Jack!” she crossed the door to his office unannounced and looked up to find him staring at her. 

Frowning. 

This couldn’t be good. 

“I forgot to mention that I tend to show up unannounced” she tried to amend “you normally don’t mind” 

“Is that  _ all _ that you forgot to tell me?” he asked and goodness, wasn’t that a loaded question. 

“Do you believe that I misplaced some case information on purpose?” she was about to add an ‘again’ after that but since there was no way of Jack knowing that she usually did so, she opted to avoid the subject altogether “Because I honestly tried to rely as much as we had gathered…”

“It isn’t about the case” he seemed severe, angry even. 

She wasn’t used to this Jack. It was unnerving. 

“I’m afraid I don’t understand” she settled on saying and his face changed.

He seemed tired. Tired and lost. This was a Jack she had seen before, after a car crash he had thought had taken her life. This time, it was him a car crash had taken away. The irony was too cruel for Phryne to dwell on. 

“Neither do I, it seems” he sighed, defeated.

He let himself fall on his seat and Phryne noticed the details, accentuated by his demeanor. The eyebags under his eyes. The unkempt state of his tie. The unorganized mess on his desk. She felt as lost as he looked. Still, he needed her to be stronger than that. She  _ was _ stronger than that. 

“What’s the matter, Jack?” she had an intense urge to sit on his desk, run a hand through his hair and comfort him. 

But she couldn’t. She hoped the fondness in her voice could somehow make up for the lack of physical comfort she was unable to provide. 

“Are we  _ together _ ?” the question was strained but firm. 

She froze. She wasn’t expecting that so soon. She had done everything in her power to keep him from knowing…

“Because I found your things in my house” he added, avoiding her gaze. 

Oh.  _ That _ . 

She had thought of asking Dot to pick her stuff up from his place, but with the hospital visits, her talks with Mac and the increasingly difficult work she had to do to keep the case within their jurisdiction and not let any other sub-par officer take it from Jack’s hands, which would be entirely inconvenient for both, she forgot. 

“Not just that but a lot of letters and telegrams...I didn’t read them, it was too much information, but I assumed…” 

He was straining against his emotions and Phryne felt like she was witnessing him agonizing across from her. It was painful. 

“Yes, we...we were in a relationship” she confirmed, trying to sound anything but completely heartbroken “I apologize for not telling you, I was advised to be slow in the revealing of information and the divorce seemed like a big enough thing to worry about without adding onto that”

Jack was silent. His eyes were still focused elsewhere, anywhere but her face. His hands were fidgeting nervously and Phryne was feeling incredibly drawn to the idea of holding him through it, unadvisable as it may have been. 

“We  _ were _ , then” he continued, his voice hoarse with something akin to pain “Past tense”

She was confused at first as to what he meant. Did he try to ask whether they had broken up _before_ the crash or whether they were still together presently? Not even Phryne knew the answer to the second question, since it took two to form a couple and Jack didn’t seem much inclined at the moment. 

“We were together until the accident” she clarified, hesitant “We hadn’t broken up, if that is what you want to know”

He saw her, eye to eye, for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime. He was frowning, whether with confusion or anger, Phryne didn’t know. His hands stilled in his knees, a wayward lock fell from his usually perfect hair, right on his forehead. 

“Are we engaged?” 

She didn’t mean to snort. She really didn’t. For a second, her brain unconsciously took it as playful banter between them. The memory of his voice, the unguarded look of his face, it felt too familiar and Phryne interpreted it as a joke before she could help herself. 

All it took to silence her, though, was his horrified expression. 

“Is this a joke?” he asked, visibly hurt “Are you playing with me?”

“Of course not, Jack, I could never…”

“I don’t know you, Miss Fisher, but I know myself and I wouldn’t be in a relationship if it wasn’t something I wholeheartedly believe in” he stood up, facing her “so if it is a joke to you and you prefer to end it here…”

“I am _not_ that kind of woman, Jack Robinson” her voice trembled with anger. 

She knew it wasn’t fair. He didn’t know her. He could assume, from what he saw, from what he could gather, the kind of affair they had, the kind of affairs  _ she _ had. And he would be mostly right. But not in this. And it was a subject that hurt her too much to get into with someone who, now, was an outsider. An outsider to their own relationship.  

“I too wouldn’t be in this kind of relationship if I wasn’t committed” she continued, trying to lower her tone “but what we have...I can’t explain it to you right now, not like this” 

She sat down in the chair across from him, crossed her legs and arms and looked at him intently. 

“My plan was to work on the case, just that, and see if, eventually, something came up, a memory, a feeling...” she sighed “I don’t intend you to pick up where we left off because it’s impossible, I was trying to give you proper space” she frowned “But whether you like me or not, this case is _ ours _ and I’m not letting it go, not after all I have invested in it” 

Jack seemed to be pondering his options. However few those might have been. It took him some seconds, some unbearable seconds, to sit down again and face her with something resembling neutrality. 

“I think I can work with that plan” he acceded, and Phryne could feel that, very deep inside, the old Jack was still hidden somewhere within that stranger. 

She smiled. 

“Well, as far as our major suspects are concerned, one is free for now but hasn’t done anything suspicious, for what WPC Jones can say…”

“Jones?”

“Yes, the lovely female officer who saw you in the hospital a couple times” Phryne beamed “She’s such a joy to work with, but don’t tell Hugh that I said that, he’ll think I have favorites”

“And do you?” Jack seemed confused but was trying to keep up. 

“Well, yes, of course, Jones is my favorite, but I can’t tell that to Hugh since he’s married to my assistant…” she turned to him fully then, in a conspiratorial tone “By the way, do you have your stash at hand? I’m getting a bit hungry and I didn’t bring any of Mr. Butler’s food…”

“Stash?” Jack seemed shocked and Phryne didn’t realize the various implications of the word until it was too late. 

“Oh don’t you worry” she stood up, rounded the desk, reached swiftly under it and procured the tin that Jack hadn’t even seen “I know all your secrets”

She went back to her seat, as easily as she had left it, and opened the can with the cookies in the middle of the desk. 

“Oh, so I still keep them in my office” he seemed to be taking mental notes of everything he felt was important. 

“Thankfully for us” she took one of the cookies and bit it with gusto “Now, about the case…”

“You were saying something about WPC Jones…”

“Oh, yes!” she beamed once again at the mention of her name “I asked her to keep track of the Osmonds while we weren’t able, in case they left the country or did something sketchy, but apparently nothing of note has happened” she frowned “Although, considering their child and the fact that they’re really economically impaired at the moment, it would be preposterous to think they’d leave”

“You told me about that, about their situation” he frowned, probably trying to remember an entire evening of explanation on how the entire world was going through an economy pandemic. 

“Our other suspect, on the other hand, is still missing in action” she took another cookie, relishing in its familiar taste. 

“What about the car that attacked us?”

“Nothing on that either” Phryne leaned on the desk “I think it’s time to talk to David again but, this time, show him _ all _ our cards”

“David Rodgers, the victim’s brother?” 

“He might remember something about her, if he isn’t covering for her, since he was the one to recommend her in the first place” she stood “We can meet him in my parlor this evening, after you’ve sorted out whatever all this paperwork is”

“I wish  _ I  _ knew what it is” Jack sighed. 

Phryne’s smile was fond and honest. 

“You’ll figure it out, I’m certain of that” she turned towards the door, her perfume leaving a trace along the way “Hugh knows my address, he’ll take you when it’s time”

She picked up Dot on her way to the front door, her shorter steps following her strides with much less effort than she had once needed. She had grown into herself, her sweet protégé. 

“How is he, miss?” she asked, softly. 

“He knows that we were together” she moved towards the street, locating Bert & Cec around the corner, the cab a momentary replacement for the Hispano that was still in repairs. 

It would take more money to fix it than it would to buy a new one and, given the state of the economy, the choice wasn’t an easy to make. But that car had meaning, a history, and she felt like giving up on it would imply giving up on other, less material things. 

“Did he remember?” Dot’s eyes gleamed with hope and Phryne wished she was half as optimistic as her assistant was. 

To Dot, Jack’s situation was like the plot of a romance novel or a dramatic picture. She was waiting for a kiss from Phryne to make him remember everything all at once, like a fairy tale spell broken by true love’s kiss. She didn’t want to dissuade her but her enthusiasm sometimes hurt Phryne’s skeptic, realistic stance. 

“Not really, he just...put the pieces together himself” she sighed “I forgot my things in his house”

Dot covered her mouth with her hands, scandalized. 

“Oh, God!” she exclaimed “Poor man must have been so shocked!”

“I can only hope that it was a good kind of shock” she said while opening the back door of the cab “just like the first time we met”

* * *

Her house was a true reflection of her. In turn, that meant that it was the complete opposite of his own. It was delicate, elegant, exuding both femininity and power. Just like her. 

Her butler, whose name curiously matched his profession (he had thought, upon her mentioning him in his office, that it had been a nickname, but these sort of strange and unusual truths were building up when it came to their acquaintance), seemed to know him well. He had prepared his favorite sandwiches, asked him about how he was feeling, offered tea before any kind of alcohol, in case he was still feeling nauseous or dizzy.  

In an unexpected, terrifying way, he was feeling more and more like it wasn’t just her who had made herself comfortable in his own personal space, but that it had been mutual. There wasn’t a Jack Robinson-shaped hole in Wardlow that was waiting for him to return, but it seemed as if he had left there an imprint that was very much felt. 

That consideration was, however, battling the reality that was Phryne Fisher interacting as intimately as she was with David Rodgers. 

“You were really kind to me the last time we spoke, David” she poured him a glass of bourbon, leaning towards him more than necessary, sitting beside him in the chaise “But I have to admit that I wasn’t entirely honest”

David Rodgers seemed like a poor, honest man, who had absolutely no chance against her. She was a hurricane, taking him in a stride. 

“I...I assume it was necessary...being confidentiality something in cases of this kind, right?” he took a sip of his drink but he was already drowning in her. 

Jack felt as if he shouldn’t be there. He wasn’t jealous, he couldn’t be, there weren’t any memories to fuel the emotional backbone that should be present when it came to being jealous. Still, he felt...uneasy. 

“When I inquired about Miss Dennings, I wasn’t merely interested in her fashion sense” she crossed her legs, sitting as close to him as she was, and the man was clearly at a complete loss “We have reason to think that Miss Dennings may be a suspect for your brother’s murder”

“That’s impossible” he answered, suddenly in a different tone. 

Rodgers changed his stance almost immediately, his shy demeanor replaced by a stern attitude that looked somewhat misplaced in him, like a sweater that was too big for him, like one that had belonged to his brother. 

“I vouched for her,  _ I _ gave her the job” he frowned, holding his glass too tightly, his knuckles turning white with the strength “If she did it then...then it’s on me” he sighed, defeated, his strength gone as fast as it had come, draining him completely “If she felt pushed to do something like that, the poor girl...I wanted to help her...I just wanted to help…” 

Jack suddenly felt incredibly sorry for him. He didn’t seem to be lying, he seemed a legitimately good person trying to help other people. 

Miss Fisher, with a certainty and determination that looked out of place in the dreary scene, reached out and took his hand, the one holding the glass, which relaxed at her touch. She delicately took the glass from him, placing it on the table in front of them, and turned her attention to him completely, as if Jack wasn’t in the room, as if he didn’t even exist. 

“I’m so sorry to say this, David” her flirty tone was replaced with something a lot more honest, and he could understand just that easily the empathy that led her to be such a regarded detective. 

She understood people. She connected with people. It was something innate, almost instinctual of hers, or so it seemed. He wondered, for the first time in all those days, about her history, about how she had come to be herself. He sort of assumed she had always been, just like that, the force of nature she seemed to be. But something told him, as he saw her connecting with David Rodgers in a way she never had with him, that there was a lot of herself that she had been keeping away from him. 

“Jack and I went to the address she gave your company and there isn’t anything there” she didn’t let go of his hand “There hasn’t been a house in that lot in ages and none of the neighbors knew her by name or description” she leaned towards him, voice soft “She lied to you David” he visibly flinched at that “And taking into account that we were attacked on our way back from there, I am in the obligation to ask about how exactly she came to be employed by you”

If David Rodgers had felt disappointed before, after hearing that he was mortified. Jack wasn’t in a position to make assumptions, taking into account how much he didn’t know, but it seemed evident that the man was not aware of how much Miss Dennings was hiding. 

“I met her at Strano’s” his voice was vacant, all emotion drained from it as he recalled. 

Miss Fisher seemed surprised and she stole a glance towards him. He felt, for her demeanor, that she was trying to tell him something, talk to him without speaking, but whatever code they might have shared before was missing and he was left wondering why the mention of the restaurant was important. 

He knew it, had worked in cases that revolved around it, but it didn’t ring any particular bell, aside from the Camorra.  

“She was waiting tables and made a mistake because of me” he looked down, ashamed “I accidentally made her trip, her tray was scattered and she was severely reprimanded by her boss, Antonio, I believe, and the argument got heated” he let go of Miss Fisher’s hand, fidgeting with his fingers “It ultimately resulted in her getting dismissed right then and there, no references, no nothing, the poor child...and all because of my clumsiness…”

“So, you felt it was your duty to help” Miss Fisher wasn’t asking, it was clear that it was in David Rodgers’s nature to do such a thing.

“I followed her outside, caught her and asked her if I could do anything to help” he looked into Miss Fisher’s eyes, almost pleading “I couldn’t let her go knowing her story, Miss Fisher, she told me how she was an orphan, how she feared she would turn to an... _ improper _ life without a job...I offered to help and kept my word” he looked down again, guilty and ashamed “Edward opposed to it and it was the first time in our lives that I won an argument against my brother...I felt so proud of that... _ what a fool _ ”

“It’s not your fault, David” her hands were both on his again, her tone caring and understanding “You did what you thought was right, your intentions were in the right place”

“Do you think she lied about anything else?” he asked, visibly nervous “Aside from her residence?”

Jack knew it was unlikely for it to be the only lie. There was surely a reason why she hadn’t been truthful about her whereabouts and it wasn’t any sort of modesty. She had claimed to be an orphan in a position of desperate need, if she had said she lived in the streets, it wouldn’t have made a difference to David Rodgers. There was something there, a reason, that was escaping them. 

“We will have to ask their former employers” Jack said, for the first time a part of the conversation “I’ve worked around that restaurant before, because of cases with the Camorra, we don’t know how far this girl’s lies can have roots in”

Miss Fisher’s eyes were again intently on him. She seemed to be both trying to tell him something and trying to figure something out. Jack wondered if, at some point before, their level of communication had been as smooth as to work in that way, with knowing looks and familiar gestures. 

He felt an emptiness in the pit of his stomach, like the ache for something he knew he should be missing but couldn’t quite grasp from the jumble of blurred visions that his memory had become. 

* * *

Phryne was spending an embarrassing amount of time to breach the subject of Strano’s with Jack. She had wondered whether the right thing was to outright ask, to tell him what she knew, or to let it go and just wait and see what he remembered when they got there. 

But then, if he didn’t remember Concetta and she turned out to be too much of an emotional pull, his recovery could be affected. 

If there was something Phryne Fisher disliked was walking on eggshells. She preferred stepping on them unabashedly with high heels and a purpose. But everything that was happening with Jack was making her change her perspective on things, visualize everything with different lenses that she wasn’t used to. 

In a way, she felt that the Phryne Fisher who had arrived back to Australia in 1928 wouldn’t have been as prepared to face the current situation in the way this Phryne was. She had always been a person of empathy and understood emotions well enough, but this idea of meticulously thinking of outcomes before acting, of being so cautious about her own attitudes and actions, this was more like… more like what Jack Robinson would do. 

She had the feeling that, if things had been in reverse, if she had lost her memories and Jack’s had remained, things would have turned out extremely differently. But that wasn’t a thought she wanted to entertain as Hugh drove them in a police car to Strano’s. 

Bert and Cec were on their own mission, doing everything in their power to locate the assaulting drivers. Jack was still not allowed to drive, upon Mac’s orders, because of his recuperating concussion. Phryne was missing the Hispano more than she ever thought, yet another piece of her past years in Melbourne missing from her life. 

She made a decision after Hugh stopped right outside the restaurant. 

“Hugh, could you give us a moment, please?” she asked, more hesitant than she actually wanted to sound. 

“Sure thing, miss” he nodded “I’ll go inside and ask for someone in charge to meet you”

Hugh had been taking a lot of initiative after the crash. He had also lost Jack, in a way, since their relationship had been almost non-existent about four years prior. Most of their work together had happened afterwards, which meant that to Jack, Hugh was now nothing but another officer. 

And even if Jones had also had a good relationship with Jack, to Hugh he was a bit of a hero. Jack had been both a mentor and a supportive force behind Hugh’s career and losing that had hurt him more than he could admit to anyone but Dot. 

So he took his pain and transformed it into action, into becoming more assertive and trying to show this Jack Robinson what the past one had helped him become. 

Phryne admired his determination. 

“There’s something again, isn’t there?” Jack asked, visibly worried “Something you’re not telling me”

Phryne realized that there was no easy or right way to do it, so she just talked.

“What do you remember about Concetta Strano, Antonio's daughter?” Mac would probably chastise her for how direct she was being, but she was done with the eggshells for the time being. 

“I...I’m not sure” Jack was visibly confused “I think her husband was connected to some incidents with the Camorra…”

Phryne did the math in her head. She didn’t know for sure how long Jack’s relationship with Concetta had been or how intimate. She knew Jack’s stance on his marriage prevented him from pursuing anything as he was still together with Rosie, but he had never talked about Concetta in too much detail for her to know. 

“You had...something with her” she said, and felt like a schoolgirl taking about crushes “After her husband was murdered, you investigated the case and I believe you had some sort of a relationship with her”

Jack looked at her as if she had grown a second head spontaneously. 

“Are you sure?” he frowned “With a victim’s wife?  _ Me _ ?”

Phryne wanted to laugh at what he focused on, but the last time she had done something like that, he had taken it for mocking. 

“You told me very little about it but I’m pretty sure something went on between you two...you did tell me once that she was willing to stay with you for good, but you turned her down”

“Because of her family?” he seemed confused again, like listening to a story of someone else’s life and not his own.

“I’m very sure she would have been willing to leave them for you” Phryne smiled sadly. 

She didn’t think these memories were going to be painful for her. There was a lot she ignored about Jack’s relationship with Concetta and, after all, it was water under the bridge. She had never been as naive as to think Jack’s romantic past begun and ended with Rosie Sanderson. 

Still, there had always been a bruise in her heart when she thought about the future Jack could have had with someone like Concetta instead of her. Someone who could give him the stable, proper marriage that a man like him was raised to want. And now that Jack didn’t have his feelings for her any longer, who knew how this could go. 

“I must have had my reasons” he cut through Phryne’s train of thought, looking at her with an indiscernible expression that she didn’t want to read much into. 

* * *

Concetta seemed to be a very warm and caring person. She called him “Gianni”, knew his food preferences, treated him more like a friend than a regular customer. It felt odd to him. 

Her demeanor towards him was a lot more open and honest than Miss Fisher’s, she didn’t act guarded and her actions were a lot less mysterious and a lot easier to understand. He could see, somehow, why they had apparently had a relationship. 

It still baffled him, though, to learn about yet another relationship he had absolutely no recollection of whatsoever. Especially when it was to someone who seemed like almost the complete opposite to the woman he was, apparently, in a relationship with presently. 

Miss Fisher explained to her what had happened to him and Concetta seemed genuinely worried, yet she was able to act more calm upon Miss Fisher’s recommendation of not stressing his mind with recollections. They talked alone for a while, Miss Fisher and her, a while during which Jack was left attempting to eat lunch and pondering on what was his old self like to form so many attachments as easily, after what must have surely been a deep blow to his soul with the divorce. 

How could a few years change a person so much?

Miss Fisher returned to the table, alone, and gave Jack a reassuring nod. It was the first time he noticed how tired she looked. Maybe because he hadn’t been paying attention, maybe because he hadn’t been as used to her as to tell, but it dawned on him then how exhausted she must have been through all this, as much as he was. 

He started reaching out, his hand moving impossibly closer to hers on the table, when Concetta made her way to them with papers in her hands. 

“I looked in the books, but there isn’t anyone with the name Dennings in our employees list” she joined them, sitting down beside Phryne “I asked papa about the argument you mentioned, and he said he only remembered something like that happening with the Moretti girl, about a year ago or so, maybe less than that”

“Moretti?” Jack couldn’t remember the last name from any Camorra case he worked on in the years he could recall. 

“Yes, Annabella Moretti” Concetta sighed “Nice young girl, we gave her work when her father left, poor child, everyone in the neighborhood knows the story, that poor woman abandoned with three young kids and Annabella having to work to help them” she looked distressed “I wasn’t here when papa argued with her but he told me she didn’t left him much of a choice that day, she was acting unreasonable, he thought she was going mad”

“As if she wanted to be fired…” Miss Fisher added. 

“As if she wanted to make a scene” Jack caught her train of thought and he was impressed with how swiftly it had happened “A scene performed for a captivated audience”

“One particular audience member who could give her a better paying job” Miss Fisher concluded “I think we were looking for the wrong name all along, our Miss Anna Dennings and this Annabella Moretti might be the same person”

Miss Fisher smiled to him and, suddenly, he felt the most extraordinary sense of déjà vu, so strong that he felt his stomach churn, as if he was on the tallest swing in the world and free falling to earth at last. 

* * *

When Jack arrived to Dr. MacMillan’s office that late afternoon, she wasn’t alone. He could hear her voice and another woman’s, and his innate investigative instinct won the battle against propriety. He couldn’t help but listen intently before entering. 

“Poor Phryne, she must be distraught” the unknown voice said, sighing “She tries not to show it, as she always does, but it must be taking its toll on her”

“I try to tell her to have more faith in the process” Dr. MacMillan’s voice added “He isn’t lost forever, she just has to give it time”

“Phryne has never been the epitome of patience, Liz” the unknown voice seemed fond when saying that “But a lot has changed in the past years, maybe that can change too”

“A lot has changed, indeed…” 

The intimate tone of Dr. MacMillan’s voice made Jack decide it was the right moment to to stop listening. He knocked and waited a proper time between she gave him permission to enter and he actually did, just in case. This would be something to ask Miss Fisher about later, even if it made him feel uncomfortably flustered. 

“Well, if it isn’t the talk of town” the unknown voice belonged to a woman Jack didn’t remember ever seeing “You probably don’t know who I am, which is fascinating to me, since now I could potentially change all of your notions about me and you wouldn’t know”

“You’re already ruining it, Jilly” Dr. MacMillan regarded her with so much fondness that Jack felt out of place in such a domestic scene “He’ll never trust you now”

“Well, I do have a talent for intervening on the truth, you know” the unknown woman stood up and walked towards Jack “I’m a lawyer, after all” she offered her hand to him “Jillian Henderson” 

“Nice to meet you, Miss Henderson” he shook her hand, slightly confused but not completely out of place. 

It somehow made a lot of sense for her to be the type of person Miss Fisher would be friends with. 

“Phryne has already talked to me about the case you’re working on” she continued “She thinks you may need my services, especially when it comes to representing women in cases of financial and social distress” 

“Distress seems to be a common denominator in this case” Jack added, sitting down “Thank you in advance for your assistance” 

“Don’t mention it” the short, stout woman sat beside him, and Jack would have expected her to leave if she was anyone but one of Miss Fisher’s friends. 

“How are you feeling, Inspector?” Dr. MacMillan had her concerned doctor demeanor on “Any new symptoms you’re worried about?”

“I...I’m not here because of a physical problem” he admitted, somehow inhibited under not one but two pairs of eyes intently on him. 

“Do you need me to recommend an expert in the psyche…” Dr. MacMillan started rummaging through papers on her desk. 

“No, I...I’d rather talk to you” he frowned “in a personal rather than professional manner”

He expected Miss Henderson to leave but she just looked even more enthralled. 

“So, this is about Phryne” she offered and Dr. MacMillan looked at her with severity.

“Jilly!” she frowned.

“What? I’m her friend too, if there’s something I can do to help them…” she smirked “Besides, you always take Jack’s side in arguments, that’s why I’m here, to balance it out"

“I do not!” Dr. MacMillan crossed her arms “I was Phryne’s friend first!”

“Yes, but Jack and you are pals and that gives her a disadvantage” she turned to Jack then, with a comfortable trust that made him feel he’d known her all his life “One time she came to me fuming because Liz had taken your side on whatever petty argument about a case…”

“Jillian…” Dr. MacMillan’s menacing tone had no bite to it so it sounded more like a petty child than a hurt party. 

“ _ ‘Jilly, Mac is a traitor!’ _ ” she imitated Miss Fisher’s voice but made a childish inflection which made Jack smile “ _ ‘She likes Jack more than she likes me now!’ _ ”

Whatever response Dr. MacMillan was going to give died in her mouth when Jack started laughing. He couldn’t help but find the whole situation hilarious and Miss Henderson had a way of speaking that made him feel, for the first time in days, that he belonged where he was. 

“See? He still likes me” she told Dr. MacMillan, whose mock anger had turned into adoration as he looked at her. 

“You’re impossible” she sat down, a besotted smile on her face “So, is this about Phryne?”

Jack’s demeanor was less on edge after that interval, he felt a lot less judged between these people who clearly knew him more than he knew himself. 

“I found out about our relationship” he started, knowing full well this wasn’t as shocking to them as it had been to him a day before “And it’s a bit too much to take in”

“The fact that you had a relationship with her?” Dr. MacMillan asked, patiently.

“At first it was just that but now...it isn’t just the relationship, it’s the proof of something that should be there but I can’t quite get back to” 

“What do you feel is missing? Aside from the obvious, I mean, aside from your memories” for all that Dr. MacMillan said about not being an expert in the psyche herself, she sure knew how to get to the bottom of things. 

"I...I understand now that...I must have _ really _ loved her" Jack’s statement was almost a sigh, exhausted.

"Did she tell you that?" Dr. MacMillan frowned.

"No, she didn't explicitly say, but...I can gather...from all the small things"

"The small things?"

"My home smells like her, I keep her letters inside my favorite passages of Shakespeare, her house feels like somewhere I once belonged in and nothing has felt more unnervingly familiar in these past 24 hours than the way in which we work together" he looked down “She looks at me sometimes and I know, I understand that there’s something there, some implicit message that we must have both understood at some point, a code we shared and now I can’t understand it and I feel...I feel like it’s hurting her” he put his head in his hands “I don’t know how I feel about her but I don’t want to hurt her”

He felt miss Henderson’s hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Dr. MacMillan smiling understandingly at him. 

“It isn’t important how you think you must have felt before” she said, taking his hand “What matters is how you feel  _ right now _ ” she nodded once, encouragingly “Talk to her” 

Jack Robinson didn’t know how he had come to be surrounded by so many strong-willed powerful women in the past few years he had missed, but as Elizabeth MacMillan poured him a drink and Jillian Henderson told him funny stories about them and Miss Fisher, he was glad to become friends with them all over again. 

* * *

Phryne wasn’t expecting her doorbell that late. Not anymore. Not after all that had happened. She had just finished dinner and was about to withdraw to her room, avoiding her parlor once more, because an evening cup by herself only reinforced memories she had once shared but where only hers to keep after that crash. 

She was halfway up the stairs when she heard Mr. Butler say his name. She froze. It took her some seconds to react, to remind herself that she couldn’t expect the same Jack that had visited her at this hour for the past years. 

All her poise, her strength and conviction turned to ash when she saw how exhausted and desolated he looked. She was so focused on grieving the Jack she had lost that she had forgotten the one that was still there, trying with all his might to pick up where the other one had left off, and surely feeling lost in the task. 

He refused her offer of a drink, sat on the settee and looked intently at the floor, his shoes, the carpet, anywhere but her. She took the drink she had poured herself and sat across from him, waiting. 

She had never felt so far away from him, not even when she was halfway across the world. 

“I wanted to talk to you” he started, his voice sore, as if he had stayed silent for a long while, pondering how to share whatever was haunting him “about us”

Phryne knew it was coming but she still felt terrified. She was not ready to address the subject. The truth was that it hadn't been just for him that she had avoided it, it wasn’t only a way to adhere to Mac’s suggestions. It was because she knew that, in order to explain their relationship to him, she had to understand it and, for that to happen, she had to come to terms with how  _ she _ felt about him. What she  _ wanted _ . What she envisioned for a  _ future _ together. 

Phryne Fisher, the woman who had escaped permanence, who had lived every day in motion, was scared to think about wanting something different. Something stable. It was fear what had kept her from the subject, fear of facing what she really wanted and finding her identity challenged forever. 

“I don’t think I can talk about it all just yet” she confessed, leaving all excuses behind “I myself need some time to think about it” 

“I understand that” he sounded so broken and Phryne realized that, aside from physical comfort, she didn’t know how else to approach him in this state of emotional turmoil. 

“I have to admit that, even if working with you feels...right, in an inexplicable way” he looked at her then, his eyes open and honest “I still can’t quite picture us together” 

There was silence, a pressing, heavy silence that was charged with thoughts, with fears from both of them, and Phryne felt both like wanting to run away as far from him as she could and also the overwhelming ache of wanting to hold him as close as possible. 

"The truth is that I find it impossible to believe...that you and me were..." he said, once more, and didn't finish the sentence, but it wasn't necessary. 

Phryne felt it like a stab in the heart. It hurt more than she would ever admit to hear him say it. 

"Is it so unlikely?" she all but whispered, her eyes lost in his, in the depth of his pain that was so much like her own but also so different. 

So many nights like that one had seen them so close, a romantic overture away from the proximity they had been leaning towards from day one. Now they were as distant as if they had never met before. 

"Of course it is" he sighed "for what I know about you now, after working with you, it's impossible to conceive that a woman like you..."

"‘ _ A woman like me _ ’?" she became confrontational, anger close to boiling in her voice, but he wasn't looking at her anymore. 

He was looking down again. Lost. Sad. 

"An extraordinary woman like you, one like I’ve never met before in my life...would settle for someone as plain and regular as me" 

Phryne's anger collapsed inside of her. She froze, taking in the man before her. She had never seen him so bare, so honest, so vulnerable. She understood then, that even if he had merely mentioned these things before, the feelings weren't completely new, they weren't prompted by the amnesia. A seed of them had been planted in Jack and without the memory of their relationship, it was all that was left of them. The idea that he wasn’t enough for her. That she was a world away from him. 

She stood up, took a seat beside him, her glass still firmly clenched in her hands, aching to touch him instead. She leaned her head on his shoulder, a tentative, minuscule approach that she hoped carried as much comfort as she wanted to provide. 

“We could be friends first, maybe” she offered “Like we were before, once” she closed her eyes, relishing in their small form of proximity “No expectations, no patterns to fill just...us learning to know each other again” 

“You know more about me than I do about you, though” he was still, unmovable, but not reticent. 

“Well, that’s part of the charm” her voice was soft, a weak attempt at the playfulness with which she used to approach him so unabashedly in what felt like another lifetime “you were always fond of mysteries” 

He stayed silent for a while, contemplating. She held her breath. 

“Something we have in common” his voice was as soft as hers “I presume”

She reached out and held his hand in hers. They could do this. They would make it through. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I have 20+ pages of notes and research for this fic (which is one of the many reasons why it takes so long to write) and a good chunk is on amnesia. I've read a lot about it in order to procure a somewhat believable portrayal while also serving my plot, I hope it's enough. Jack suffers from a form of retrograde amnesia which legitimately happens after head trauma, but the amount of years he lost is a bit big for a trauma that didn't have him in a coma for as long, so I hope that even if I'm bending believeability a bit there, you can still be on board with it. I am unaware if the term was coined before or after 1930 (the year in which the fic takes place) but I added it anyway and let's hope for the best. 
> 
> \- I have a very detailed timeline that I made for this fic, with the help of a lot of incredible posts on tumblr and my own research. I'm not putting it here because I don't think you care to know, but I decided to place the time when Jack investigated Fabrizzi's murder between early 1928 (when Rosie moved out, as stated vaguely in 'Raisins and Almonds') and late July 1928 (when Phryne arrived). I don't think Jack would have had any sort of affair-ish while still living with Rosie, he's not that kind of guy, as portrayed in the show. 
> 
> \- As you have seen, two book characters made it onto this fic, WPC Jones (who hasn't explicitly shown up yet but was mentioned) and the lovely Jillian Henderson, who I adore. I haven't finished reading all the books, so my interpretations are based on the earlier ones and I hope they aren't too OOC for you. Jilly (as Phryne calls her, so Mac calls her that too) is such a witty, smart and sassy lady who gives the court a run for their money, I totally see her and Mac together, so I don't know if the fandom has them as a ship or not but I'm going for it. Jilly calls Mac Liz because I felt it was a bit more personal that way for Jack to gather they aren't just gal pals. 
> 
> \- Now for the dreaded subject of the updates. I don't have a schedule for this fic. As I hope you have noticed, it's a lot of work to write (especially for all the details, research and whatnot) and I'm trying to post a good enough content that can be enjoyed. That paired with the fact that I have a life and responsibilities and that this sadly does not pay my bills, as well as other projects I also have to post (I have a lined up fic for another fandom coming up), means I can't promise dates. I can however promise that I will try to work on it as much as I can. And when people leave you comments demanding updates _instead_ of leaving kudos (like it happened in the last chapter), it doesn't help motivate me either, because it makes me feel like I'm not doing a good enough job. I like writing this, I want to keep writing this, but I can't promise dates and I ask you to please to respect that. 
> 
> \- As always, this is un-beta'd and I'm not an English speaker, all mistakes are my own. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, it means the world to me that you do, and thanks to everyone who left feedback as well as kudos in the last chapter, you're amazing people ♥


	3. Risks and rewards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She embodied the instant in which you know it will imminently pour. That moment of electric tension in the air, the smell of wet dirt around you, the sound of thunder in the distance, the pressure of humidity pulsating in the sky._  
>  Phryne Fisher was a thunderstorm ready to unleash.  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If there's anyone out there who is still interested in this story, I am deeply sorry for how long this update took. All explanations will be in the end notes. Specific warnings of this chapter include: mentions of violence and brutality, sickness and hospitalization.

The worst thing was the gap.

The immense, unbearable gap between the man he knew he had been and the one that everyone around him remembered.

He had never considered himself prone to change, he was a man of habits and had always been so. But everything seemed to imply that the few years he had lost had been incredibly life changing, and he suspected a strong reason was her.

He wondered, as he crouched beside her in the dark, wet alley, her distinctive perfume cutting through the smell of smoke and the pressing stench of humidity, how much time it had taken her to turn his world upside down.

He suspected it had been merely an instant.

“There might be a more practical way to get this done” he suggested, as her body pressed closer to his, in order to see the pub across the street “Like a warrant, for example”

“Of course, Jack, but where would the fun be on that?” her smile was close enough to notice she wasn’t as nonchalant as she wanted to appear.

He wondered if she was trying to hide how worried she was, concerning their situation, and if he had developed some sort of unconscious way of seeing through some of her bluffs. Maybe it was an ability he had learned through their time working together and which hadn’t been entirely lost in the crash.

They were standing across the street from the crowded pub, framed with the parked vehicles of its occupants, one of which was familiar to her but not to him. The dark van was the one that had crashed them on the night that the man he had been disappeared and Jack had been left to wonder about the gap between them.

It had been the true identity of Miss Dennings or, more accurately, Miss Moretti, what had brought back to Miss Fisher’s memory a piece of information she thought lost to the vague events of the crash. One that had been there, buried within the panic of his accident and the grief for his lost memory.

Right after the crash, she had heard voices. Male voices, of the two occupants of the car they collided. Visually, she had paid more attention to the driver, his face contorted with fear at the moment of the attack still ingrained on her mind, but when they crashed and she was regaining full consciousness, she had heard them speaking.

As she recounted the accident to Jack once and again, partly to make sense of the situation and partly to try to help him remember, she had told him that she didn’t understand what they said because of the whole atmosphere of the accident. That her thoughts had been too messy at the time to make sense out of anything, even less what they had said.

But when the reveal of Miss Dennings came through, it took her just some pondering to figure it out. She didn’t understand because, added to the stress of the situation, there was an unexpected factor that she hadn’t been counting on: they were speaking Italian.

That was all it took for her drivers to be able to shorten immensely their range of investigation and that was how he found himself standing with Miss Fisher in front of a pub, in a wet alley, surveying the battered black car and waiting for the men to exit.

They decided to follow them as they left the building, trailing them with utmost care and using the services of Miss Fisher’s drivers (Jack didn’t quite remember them but had a feeling that he should have), whose vehicle was a lot more inconspicuous than a police car.  

Miss Fisher was still mourning the loss of her own car, which hadn’t been fully repaired and it seemed to be a matter of great peril for her.

They were led to a shabby looking house, lodgings which appeared to be in full use even though the state of the building seemed potentially compromising for occupants. Times were harder than he had imagined, it seemed.

He saw Miss Fisher’s hand on the door handle and hastened to take it, stopping her from exiting the vehicle.

“What do you think you’re doing?” his tone was severe and he thought he was leaving no room for her to contradict him.

He was, as he found out a second later, clearly wrong.

“Well, breaking in, Jack” she looked at him, at the building and at him again, as if it was the most obvious response in the universe “Whatever else is there to do?”

“The reasonable thing, perhaps?” he frowned “Checking the address, recognizing the perimeter, going back to the station so that I can file for a warrant,” he didn’t falter as he kept recounting “retire to sleep because it’s late and we’ve been posted outside that pub for hours, and coming back in the morning with the necessary backup, a legal document to let us search the premises and rested bodies that can withstand whatever we’ll find”

Her expression was the most delicate mixture of impatience and disappointment he had ever seen.

“I can understand that you are still unaware of our working dynamic, Jack,” she cocked an eyebrow “But, in this particular instance, it’s most inconvenient”

“I won’t allow this, Miss Fisher, it’s entirely inadvisable” he insisted, surprised that he had to point that out at all.

He heard the driver, Albert, snort at that.

There was an uncomfortable silence, that stretched longer than he thought proper for such a plainly obvious choice.

“Fine” she sighed, defeated “We’ll do it your way; Bert, let’s take the _Inspector_ ” she made an inflection when pronouncing that “back to the station”

He sat back as they moved, glad that she had seen reason but still uneasy about her doing so. He had a bad feeling about their argument. Something didn’t quite fit properly.

“Can I trust that you’ll be out of danger tonight?” he asked, as he stepped down from the car when they reached City South.

“I’ll be with Mac and Jilly, don’t you worry” she assured, not leaving the car to bid him farewell “Goodnight, Inspector”

She was gone before he could finish wishing her the same. He wasn’t sure of the reason for the hurry, but decided to attribute it to her being upset for his decision. He kept telling himself that as he entered the station to file for a warrant.

* * *

The bad thing about Jack not remembering their working dynamics was that he thought proper to _wait_ , of all things.

Without the memory of all their cases together and her valiant and graceful efforts to solve mysteries when the opportunity presented itself, rather than whenever it was _proper,_ he was left to believe that conservative police practice was useful.

The good thing about it, though, was that he forgot how much she didn’t listen to him when she judged it unnecessary.

She hadn’t lied, after all, she went to see Mac and Jilly, who were finishing dinner at the time she arrived. They were eager to hear more on the case and were delighted to know that their assailants had been found.

“I don’t want to confront them” Phryne explained, as they had coffee in Mac’s parlor “I just want to go in and check while I know they’re there” she frowned “What good will it make if we go there tomorrow morning and they’re gone, just like the Moretti girl”

“But he’s right, Phryne, it’s dangerous…” Mac sat down next to Jillian, one hand in her cup of coffee and the other one on her partner’s shoulder.

“I saw this girl, Mac, the first day, and I _knew_ she had something to do with this” Phryne left her cup on the table, her hands too shaky with rage “I saw her and let her go and waited because it was _proper_...had I caught her in the act then, we wouldn’t have been forced to look for her, we wouldn’t have been attacked, Jack would…”

“Phryne…” Jillian’s voice was soft and caring.

“Jack would still be here” Phryne finished “I wouldn’t have lost him”

“He isn’t lost, Phryne” Mac insisted “He’s here, he’s alive, he’ll be back eventually…”

“This case has already wrecked enough” Phryne’s eyes were glossy with unshed tears of sorrow and rage, mixing together in her serious countenance “I just want...I want it to be over…”

Her voice frayed in a whisper, her characteristic strength and resolve faltering in front of her friends. She was exhausted, angry, desperate and, above all, confused.

She didn’t know what to do about Jack, about their relationship, about her life. She hadn’t known what to do before, when there were two in the relationship, two to make decisions and go forward, one step at a time, so she knew even less now when she was the only one left.

But what she _did_ know was how to approach a case. How to solve it.

Phryne felt that, if she got this sorted out, if this case was done and closed, she could get a better grasp at how the hell to start over.

She needed this closure, Jack needed this closure, and she wasn’t going to let it slip through her fingers.

“You’ll go, won’t you?” Jillian's empathy was unparalleled, as usual. 

Phryne stayed silent, her gaze on her friends conveying more than words could.

“Then we’ll go with you”

“What?” Mac straightened herself and looked at Jillian “You can’t be serious”

“We can’t leave her alone in this, she doesn’t have Dot helping her now in these...nightly excursions and I wouldn’t forgive myself if I knew she went alone, in this state”

“What can we even help with?” Mac frowned.

“She said we’ll just look around, nothing more” Jillian turned from her partner to her friend “Right, Phryne?”

“I promise” she answered, more desperate to go than willing to think the question through.

“It’s settled then” Jillian got up, leaving her empty coffee cup on the table “Let me get my coat and I’ll be ready to see why these adventures of yours are so interesting”

Mac sighed, resigned, and followed her to grab her own coat. 

* * *

Jack tried to find solace in the case.

He knew that, even if he didn’t have memories, the solving of a case was something he could face. It was putting puzzle pieces together, ordering them, figuring them out, and objectivity could be an even further advantage, if he put his memory loss for good use. He was lost when it came to his identity, his past and the people who seemed to know him.

But what he _did_ know was how to approach a case. How to solve it.

There were things in the case that made no sense. The reasonable thing to assume was that Miss Dennings (or Moretti, as they now knew she was called) and Mr. Osmond had worked together. That they somehow agreed upon a joined cause, in order to complicate things to the police or with some other intention in mind.

There was always the obvious possibility of a romantic tie between them but it made no sense, knowing Mr. Osmond’s feelings for his wife.

Jack had been in the hospital when they were interviewed but Collins had taken care of the questions. They had even let them search the house in pursuit of the revolver that should have been the murder weapon but the police hadn’t found a thing.

What they had found, according to Collins, was poorer living conditions than they had expected. The building they were renting a room in was in disrepair and their lodgings were scarce and unkempt. They had merely two rooms, they shared a bathroom with the rest of the families in the building, and their daughter, who Miss Fisher had told him about from her questions to David Rodgers, was not in the house at the time of the search, but Jack assumed it was as not to scare her. For what they had declared, their daughter was only 5.

Without further evidence against them and with Lena Osmond claiming that the fight she had with the victim had been a misunderstanding, they were let go and Jones had checked regularly around their building to make sure they didn’t flee.

The secretary, Miss Hastings, who Collins had also interviewed, claimed to have arrived earlier than usual to the office because she had expected a call from Mr. Rodgers all night, which had never happened. There was an urgent matter to schedule and she assumed he had “lost track of time” as he worked into the night. It had been around 7 am when she found the body and she was too shocked to remember if there had been a shattered cup around.

After discovering Miss Moretti’s true identity, any kind of family bond between her and Thomas Osmond was also ruled out. And as long as they were aware, Mr. Osmond didn’t even seem to know, when interrogated, who she even was. Annabella Moretti might have been a ghost, had she not been seen that morning by Miss Fisher.

There was also the matter of motive.

For Mr. Osmond it was a bit more obvious, he was upset about whatever had transpired between his wife and Mr. Rodgers. Something had happened, which nobody was talking about, but not even David Rodgers seemed unfazed at the possibility of Mr. Osmond harboring ill intent towards his brother. Which also proved absurd any romantic connection between Mr. Osmond and Miss Moretti, had Mrs. Osmond’s defense been a reason for his hypothetical actions.  

The motives of Annabella Moretti were more unclear, especially after she had sacrificed her previous job to have a spot at the company and had lied about her identity. Putting herself in danger and jeopardizing what she had done just to kill Mr. Rodgers made no logical sense.

Unless this wasn’t about logic at all.

For what David Rodgers and Miss Fisher’s aunt had said about the man, Jack could assume that Mr. Edward Rodgers was able to summon the necessary resentment for crimes of passion. But poison was not a spur of the moment weapon of choice.

There was a missing link somewhere that he wasn’t quite getting. He hadn’t yet been able to talk to Mrs. Osmond himself and he thought that was a good way to start. Maybe Mr. Osmond and Miss Dennings had nothing in common but her and his wife did.

Jack had the awful feeling that, considering how everyone thought the worst of Mr. Edward Rodgers, including his brother, there might be something there.

He faced the paperwork before him and sighed.

* * *

The lodgings seemed to be in an even worse state up close. The building was in need of repairs, the front door didn’t have a working lock and the windows that were shattered were patched up with rags in their holes rather than properly changed.

Considering the neighborhood they were in and the state of world-wide economy, Phryne shouldn’t have been surprised, but it still felt wrong.  

“This is preposterous” Jillian voiced, as usual, what the other two were not able to say out loud.

“Will it make it easier or harder to check out?” Mac turned to Phryne.

“Well, I don’t think coming in and asking for a room will look natural, given our clothes and the time of the evening, but maybe we could sneak in”

Phryne was wearing her customary black ensemble that was appropriate for break ins but hadn’t thought of suggesting her companions to match her color palette before leaving.

“May I ask what you’re planning on doing when we find them, if we do?” whispered Jilly, as they easily opened the battered door “It’s not like you can ask them to go to City South with you”

“I just want to make sure they’re here” Phryne moved swiftly through the dark corridors.

She had to do _something_. It didn’t matter what, she couldn’t just let them there, knowing what they’d done. What they’d taken from her.

There wasn’t anyone in the front desk, it didn’t seem to have been used in quite a while. Most of the keys were in the holder and a room with a radio set had flickering lights and some voices in it, across from the reception.

“I’m starting to think this isn’t a paid establishment anymore” Mac suggested as they registered the dingy doors through the corridors.

They found out soon enough that there was no need to be inconspicuous because the occupants didn’t mind. Nobody paid attention to newcomers or whoever roamed the corridors.

Mac was right, it wasn’t a running business anymore, it wasn’t a terribly kept motel but a re-purposed abandoned building. The people in it weren’t paying for their stay, they were appropriating a space otherwise left by a clearly bankrupt facility. These people were homeless.

The pieces in the puzzle of this case kept getting more conflicting. Nothing made sense anymore and Phryne was upset. She was angry because a part of her, the part that had grown up in a situation similar to this, the part that had dressed in rags and ached for a better living, told her that there was more to this story than mere villains looking to harm others.

But the part that had been left behind in the wreckage of a crash, with a man who didn’t remember loving her, wanted merciless justice.

They heard some loud conversation in the upper floor and Phryne recognized the Italian accents. Used to the sharpened senses of Dot and Jack as crime-solving companions, she didn’t even tell Mac and Jilly that she was moving upstairs and it took some shushed complaining for them to follow suit.

“What will you do when you find them?” Jilly insisted, her voice a nagging reflection of Phryne’s conscience that she couldn’t shake.

Phryne didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to stop to consider her choices because she knew, very deeply, that this was not reasonable. But she was done being patient, she had been patient since the whole thing started and she wanted it to be over.

A part of her had a ridiculous feeling, a hope that made her naively expect that as soon as the case was solved, Jack was going to be back. That the worse would be over.

With that thought in mind, she climbed the stairs. With that thought in mind, she walked through the dimly lit hallway. With that thought in mind, pistol in hand, she didn’t listen to the now barely hushed warnings of her friends behind her. With that thought in mind, she resolved to take these men into custody and get this over with if it was the last thing she did.

They saw her as she moved to the door. They were arguing, alone, both of them. This close, they seemed a lot younger than she had thought. One didn’t seem older than 15. A boy. Two confused, scared boys. Her resolve dissipated like a foggy mist clearing her blurred view.

They saw her pistol first and she recognized the one on the right as the driver, the sheer panic in his eyes mirroring the one he had the day he crashed them.

Fear made you do terrible things, she had thought that day. Her pulse, slightly shivering on the gun, mirrored the sentiment.

They knew who she was. The scared one, the youngest, retreated and his movement caught her eye. She turned her sole attention to him, not to harm him but with suspicion for his change of positioning, and the other took the opportunity to throw something at her. A vase. He wasn’t meaning to hit her but to make her lose her pistol, which he accomplished.

Phryne’s gun fell to the floor and got lost underneath a cupboard as the more determined man reached for his, which had been lying on a table. Phryne felt Mac’s hand on her shoulder and Jilly’s request to run was muddled in the chaos. The weight of her own recklessness fell on her and her dazed state vanished completely with the sheer adrenaline of panic.

They moved fast and a shot missed them as she heard the more collected man shouting at the other one, who had seemed as scared as them.

What had she done?

They ran down the stairs and turned to the back of the building, hoping to have them look for them in the front. There had to be an alleyway towards the streets behind the complex.  

The dimly lit corridors were a maze of broken down upholstery and doors in a state of decay. They found their way outside, through an awfully kept common kitchen, and went straight through the alley corridor until they found their path closed.

There was a fence, a tall wire fence with rubbish, boxes and crates piled together haphazardly. They were trapped.

“We need to climb” Phyne ordered, not sure if the noises behind her were real, from the men chasing them, or in her own mind.

Jillian made a little laugh, a nervous almost whimper, but her countenance shifted as she noticed Phryne’s and Mac’s expressions.

“You’re kidding, right?” her smile shifted to a frown “You can’t seriously expect me to climb that”

“Would you rather stay with _them_?” Phryne’s tone was harsher than it should have, but her instincts were keen on making her speed up the fence and run and she didn’t want to waste time arguing.

“It’s not like I have a choice” Jillian responded severely.

It was her determination what made Phryne stop and consider the situation before her properly. The fence was tall and its access even taller, the crates and boxes a flimsy support for someone to climb them. It could stand Phryne’s physique and her agility had been sharpened by all her detective antics, while Mac’s countenance wasn’t as agile but her height could make up for it, surely. Jilly’s height wasn’t as advantageous as either of theirs and her stout body was not made for a task such as this.

“It’s ok, I’ll distract them, you both go” Jilly stood, hands on her hips, as she did in court when she knew she had the upper hand on a case. 

“I won’t leave you, Jilly” Mac was just as determined, her severe no-nonsense frown upon her face.

“Don’t be silly” Jillian reached out, her hand touching Mac’s face with reverence “You and Phryne go, I’ll be fine”

Mac enveloped Jillian’s hand in hers, eyes glossy with tears, and Phryne’s heart broke witnessing the consequence of her rash decisions taking their toll on her loved ones again.

“I can’t…” Mac begun to protest, but Jillian shook her head.

“Just go, Liz” she smiled.

“Aren’t you afraid?!” Mac’s desperation escalated and Phryne didn’t dare pull her back “They’ll hurt you! This isn’t a game!”

Jillian didn’t lose her smile, but her eyes were sharp with understanding. She was one of the strongest women Phryne had ever met and kept reminding them that every time.

“They won’t kill me, but I will probably need a doctor to patch me up, and I’d rather you be out there waiting to do so yourself when it’s all over” she spoke confidently “Go, love”

Before Phryne could pull Mac towards the fence, her friend reached out, took Jillian’s face in her hands and kissed her deeply. Jillian was caught by surprise and gasped yet let herself be taken over her lover’s embrace. When Mac’s lips left Jilly’s, they caressed an ‘I love you’ on her cheek, before removing herself and following Phryne up the fence.

The last thing they heard, as they climbed away from the scene, was Jilly’s sassy tone wishing their chasers a good night.

“Mac…” Phryne's voice was a vacant echo inside the car, while Bert drove them fast, everywhere, anywhere, far from there, far from Jillian.

“Don’t” Mac’s voice was a hurt, desperate whisper that couldn’t become a sentence.

“I just…”

“Don’t talk to me, Phryne” she didn’t look at her, didn’t look at anyone, just stared into nothingness, probably seeing the scene of their departure play on a loop before her eyes “ _Please_ ”

Phryne swallowed her words, her apologies, her vacant attempts of reassurance, they all became a knot in her throat. She couldn’t lose Jilly. She couldn’t lose Mac.

“Take us to City South, Bert” she pleaded him, and his firm nod was almost reassuring.

Almost.

The sharp pain of fear, of imminence, or the weight of a loss on her shoulders made itself present again. She remembered, in a flash of grief, why she had spent so many years detaching herself from people. Why she had opted for ephemeral relationships, constant travels, inconsistent occupations, disposable properties, fleeting lovers.

The agony of losing Janey presented itself like an over-imposed memory, which clawed its way into her once more. She drowned again in the lingering feeling of not having been able to help, to save her, to take her place…

By the time she reached Jack’s office, her eyes were glossy with tears and she was shaking from head to toe, cursing herself for her own weakness.

* * *

She embodied the instant in which you know it will imminently pour. That moment of electric tension in the air, the smell of wet dirt around you, the sound of thunder in the distance, the pressure of humidity pulsating in the sky.

Phryne Fisher was a thunderstorm ready to unleash. Her eyes were glossy with the tears she was trying to suppress, her bottom lip quivering in a snarl that seemed to show both anger and terror.

He didn’t know for sure if this was something usual for them, but it seemed entirely out of place, in a way he was unable to explain. It felt foreign in her face, this mask of fear, yet awfully familiar at the same time, as if once, in a far-away dream, he had witnessed her in that same state of desperation before.

He didn’t like it.

“Miss Fisher?” he couldn’t manage saying her first name, not here, not like this.

“Jack, please, I need you to listen to me” she spoke with such severity that she left no space for him to interrupt “I know every instinct you have, whether you remember or not, will tell you to reprimand me and curse me and be mad at me for an unfathomable amount of time for what I did”

She inhaled deeply, her pulse quivering as she grabbed the chair in front of her, knuckles white, perfectly manicured nails digging in the wooden frame.

“But I need you to help me first, _please_ ” she continued, never looking elsewhere but at him, through him “They’ve got Jilly, Jack, and it’s all my fault”

She explained it fast, because there was no time to lose, but she did so in detail, with the information he needed to proceed as safely as possible. He admired silently her ability to keep her sharp wit intact even in moments of intense despair, yet something inside him told him he should be angry, furious at her nonchalant way of jumping into danger as if her existence was meaningless without the edge of peril grazing her throat.

He gave orders to Collins and Jones, he knew he was taking more cars and officers that was necessary but he couldn’t fathom losing Jillian in this way and he couldn’t see Miss Fisher and Dr. MacMillan in this state without doing more than he could to help them.

His memories were fuzzy, but his heart knew they took priority.

“You two go to the hospital” he told them both, preparing to take off “Wait for us there, let them check you in the meantime, just in case”

“I’ll go with you” Dr. MacMillan objected, her hands trembling with what he assumed was the same blend of anger and fear her friend embodied.

“No, wait for her in the hospital” he turned, eyes firmly on hers “I know I don’t remember much, but I can tell she’d want you there”

She looked down, hiding her tears from him.

“Bring her back, Jack” she asked, but it was more an order than a plead.

Somehow, it fit with the idea he had of her and with the soft prickles in his memory that her presence brought.

“I will” he looked at her first and then at Miss Fisher, a silent agreement, between them.

The trust, the overwhelming trust she looked at him with, hit him with a force his head couldn’t grasp but his heart embraced.

* * *

Waiting was excruciating.

Phyne knew that she was exhausted. Her body registered it and it screamed, with every inch of it in pain, that she had to sleep. But her mind was reeling and she couldn’t have slept even if she had been willing to try. Which she wasn’t.

She sat beside Mac, near the gates of the hospital, waiting for Jack to arrive with Jilly at last. Or an ambulance to arrive with her, given that Jack was probably going to spend the rest of the night come morning registering the premises. Which was why he had insisted to do it the next day, with paperwork and proper rest.

Phryne felt guilty about that too.

It wasn’t like her, this guilt. This nagging feeling of her actions having implications for her loved ones, implications of such magnitude. She wasn’t selfish, she knew well what it meant to have meaningful relationships, of any kind, which was why she had, for such a long time, avoided them.

After Janey’s disappearance and her parent’s marriage had dissolved in seemingly anything but name, Phryne had opted for an ephemeral life without serious ties. It was easier, she thought, to live without the impending doom of knowing that someday, somehow, she was going to lose someone important. When some form of belonging had appeared in her life, it wasn’t with her consent, and it had cost her too much of her freedom to try again soon, the ghost of René in her head for so long, chasing her.

Being back in Melbourne had given her a family. A chosen, stable, loyal, wonderful family. She had built in a few years what she had avoided for a lifetime, and the joy it brought her to know she had somewhere to go back to both thrilled her and terrified her.

Finding a balance between her nature and her will to keep this family, this stable part of her life, had been the price she knew she had to pay once she got back for a second time. But at the first sign of trouble, she grew desperate.

And the consequence was that she had to wait, patiently, for one of her best friends to be ok, while said friend’s partner was anything but.

The space between her and Mac seemed endless, even if, physically, it was merely the hold of a hand away.

Mac sat there, restless, impatient, her knee shaking sometimes, until she noticed she was doing so and tried to stop her body from showing how affected she was. Not out of pride or some sense of misplaced dignity, but out of the knowledge that, whenever Jilly showed, she had to look composed if she wanted the doctors in duty to allow her the space to see her. She wasn’t recognized as anything but a friend to her, so she had to use her professional status to get in.

It was a cruel, unfair history repeating for Mac.  

Phryne ached to hold her, to reassure her, to plead for her forgiveness, but Mac had requested silence and that was what she was going to give her.

Her hand drifted toward the space between them on the bench and inadvertently grazed Mac’s hand, to which Phryne recoiled, not intending to intrude on her friend’s preferred distance. Mac, however, searched for Phryne’s hand and held it strongly, without turning her eyes from the front gate. A small gesture that meant the world to Phryne. She took Mac’s hand in hers and leaned towards her, basking in her forgiveness and offering her presence.

Jilly arrived in a whirlwind of chaos, lying on a stretcher, with Jones right behind her. Both of them stood but Mac was the only one to follow the stretcher and the professionals, interrogating them as far as they’d let her go.

Some form of luck finally materialized for them as the young doctor on duty had been a student of Mac’s from University, so he allowed her permission to go in, alongside Jones, something Phryne knew was mandatory for hostage situations and criminal abuse.

At seeing the exchange, Phryne released the breath she felt she had been holding for hours, as she sat back down and waited.

Jack arrived less than an hour later, as the first flickers of dawn started to rise on the horizon. He sat beside her, exhausted, and without saying anything, handed her missing pistol back to Phryne.  

“Shouldn’t it be kept as evidence?” she asked in a faint whisper.

“You’ve lost enough already” he was serious, stern, not unkind but there was still a hollow stain in his demeanor of the vacancy of memories he still carried with him.

It was all she needed. Her tears finally started falling as his arms went around her, as soft and warm as she remembered them being when he was still _her_ Jack.

* * *

Jack could only convince Miss Fisher to wait a day before getting back on the case. He offered her more time, so she could keep up with Miss Henderson’s progress, as he followed the leads and interviewed the suspects. But Miss Fisher only took one, to rest only the necessary amount, before she was back on her feet.

Jack ignored if it was only her will to continue with the case or if she still felt too guilty to face her friends. He heard that Jillian was doing alright, she needed a few stitches and had some nasty bruises, signs he had seen a million times in those who were questioned by criminals, but they had reached her in time to get her out of the worst possible scenario.

“The men are in the cell, Sir” Collins told him as he entered City South around noon “They were violent at first but calmed down with isolation”

“For what I saw yesterday, they are barely men” Jack put his hat and coat in the hanger, turning to the papers Collins was giving him “The oldest must be barely over 20, if at all”

“I asked some of the guys in the gymnasium, Sir” Collins stopped as he noticed Jack’s expression of confusion “I...I coach some young men...to get them out of the streets, you see”

He filled in the gaps, almost bashful, and Jack imagined the young man he might have once met, before he became the officer he saw now.

There was always a glimpse of sadness in Collins's expression, something akin to what Miss Fisher had, that sorrow of searching in him for the man they missed and couldn’t find. He felt that he was letting a lot of people down for reasons he couldn’t even remember.

“That’s very admirable, Collins” he said, approvingly, hoping that it was something, at least, to show that he cared.

Collins smiled, avoiding his gaze, like a son who made a father proud. Jack had a vague memory of pride, some sense telling him that he might have respected this young man a lot.

“Thank you, Sir” he cleared his throat, awkward “Anyway, I asked around and I got only some vague comments, it seems they aren't friends with young men their age in the neighborhood where they reside, maybe because of the language barrier...or because of the...social circumstances”

Jack nodded, leaving the papers in his desk before following Collins down the corridor. He was going to have to look more closely at those 'social circumstances' that he had missed in the years he left in that car crash. 

“According to the doctors in charge, Miss Henderson was attacked rather erratically and repeatedly, so my best guess is that they were trying to get her to talk or, on the contrary, to silence her” Jack followed Collins to the cells “I think they were more scared than she was and might have panicked”

“Miss Fisher said the same about the crash” Collins added “That she thought they had been impulsed by desperation”

Jack thought of Phryne Fisher’s seemingly uncharacteristic recklessness that night. For what he could gather about her, she was a risk-taker, yes, but never as much as to endanger loved ones.

He couldn’t help but feeling responsible, in a way. Because he knew that her desperation was born of his condition and, also, because had he remembered how she operated, maybe he would have known she was feeling reckless enough to try something that risky.

Jack felt that, had he remembered, he would have been there beside her instead of Miss Henderson and Doctor MacMillan, and things would have turned out differently.

But he had to stop thinking about the ‘what ifs’.

The young men in the cell looked anything but collected. The youngest was shaking, crouched in a corner, while the other one seemed upset and was reassuring him in Italian.

Jack felt that, at some point, he might have known some of it, because the cadence and the words seemed familiar. He could even understand some words here and there. And one caught his attention like no other: _sorella_.

“Did you get their names?” Jack asked Collins “Their full names?”

“There weren’t identifications in the motel they were staying at, nor did they respond to questioning, Sir” Collins sighed.

“I have the feeling that Annabella Moretti had more family than she claimed to Rodgers that she had”

Jack turned back towards his office, without even reaching the suspects.

“Make sure they eat something, Collins, they look famished” he said as he left “I’ll see if Jones can get us an interpreter for tomorrow, maybe that woman in Strano’s who was so helpful to us earlier”

If Collins knew anything about his supposed past relationship with Concetta, he remained silent about it, and just nodded.

“I don’t want Miss Henderson’s treatment to go unpunished, but there’s something more here that needs to be dug out” he exited the room with Collins in tow.

“Yes, Sir” he answered promptly, a glimpse of relief in his voice, as if he had found at last some thread of the old Jack hiding inside this new one.

* * *

When Phryne and Dot arrived at the hospital the next morning, to visit Jilly and Mac, her mind was anywhere but in the case.

She was confused, exhausted and worried, and had she been anyone else, she would have probably missed the stern doctor’s voice calling for Mrs. Osmond on the corridor opposite to the one they were heading to.

But she was still Phryne Fisher, through and through.

“I think I’ll make a tiny detour, Dot, dear” she told her assistant with a stare the young woman recognized immediately.

Dot nodded, reassuring, and continued to Jilly’s room without her.

Phryne reached the open door where Mrs. Osmond had been called in and stood as close as she could without being seen from inside. She couldn’t hear much of the conversation but what she saw was enough to add something to the piling list of unexpected turns this case seemed to be made of.

Lying on a hospital bed, looking pale yet smiling despite it all, was a young girl who seemed to be of, at most, 5 years of age. Phryne immediately understood that she was Mrs. Osmond’s daughter, the one David had mentioned in passing.

Mrs. Osmond, who Phryne hadn’t yet met, was a lanky woman of dark tousled hair, almost as pale as her daughter, with bags under her eyes indicating lack of sleep. The doctor seemed to be going over details that she knew already by heart and she forced herself to smile back at her daughter, who took her hand from her place in the bed.

Phryne didn’t dare to see more. She felt bad at intruding in such a moment and, confused and saddened by the scene, retreated to her friend’s room in the opposite side of the building.

She was lost in her thoughts when she entered, yet everything dissipated once she saw Jilly with a cut in her lip and a bruise in her right eye, smiling at her.

It wasn’t usual for Phryne to cry as much as she had in the past weeks. Yet there she was, crying again, all over her battered friend, who consoled her as if Phryne had been the one in physical pain.

“I’m _so_ sorry, Jilly” she sobbed “So, _so_ sorry”

“Phryne, no, don’t even dare” Jilly caressed the top of her head, embracing her “I chose to do this, don’t even dare take away my agency”

“But if it hadn’t been for my recklessness…”

“Phryne Fisher, look at me” Jilly admonished, pushing her back a bit so she could see her eye to eye “Yes, you rushed a decision that might have been too risky, but you did it under a lot of stress and with the best intentions”

Phryne avoided her friend’s gaze, uncertain.

“This case became too personal for you so yes, you’re not as emotionally composed as you normally are” Jilly continued “But that doesn’t mean that you have to abandon your instincts and your impulsive nature for good and it sure as hell doesn’t mean that you’re at fault because people is being violent out of their own accord”

Phryne sighed, sitting straighter.

“They are so _young_ , Jilly” she muttered.

Jillian took her hand and caressed it reassuringly.

“I know, Phryne” she sounded incredibly serious “That’s why I’m telling Liz that I don’t want to press charges”

“What?” Phryne stood up abruptly.

“And I told her that she might have been hit in the head too hard” Mac reprimanded with a frown that was softer than she intended.

“There’s something seriously wrong in this case, Phryne” Jilly crossed her arms and cringed, remembering her bruises “You have a victim who, for what everyone and their mother say, was a piece of…” she noticed Dot, already blushing in anticipation “of _work_ ” she corrected herself “and two suspects who seem to be under a lot of financial and social stress…”

“Which reminds me” Phryne interrupted “I just saw Mrs. Osmond as I was coming here”

“The other suspect’s wife?” Dot looked up from the apple she was peeling for Jillian.

“In the hospital?” Mac sat at Jilly’s side on the bed.

“Their daughter is hospitalized” Phryne felt mortified “She isn’t older than 5, Mac”

“I’ll see if I can look into it later” Mac nodded “Do you think that gives them further motive?”

“If that…” Jilly sighed “that _man_ used a kid as some kind of leverage, who are we to put the parents behind bars?”

“You’re a lawyer, love” Mac cocked an eyebrow.

“The law and justice don’t always go hand in hand, Liz” she defied, smirking, because didn’t both of them know that better than anyone?

Phryne looked at them, at their proximity, their eyes lost in each other’s and smiled fondly. They were going to be fine. 

* * *

They chose to talk to David Rodgers, first and foremost, and did so in Miss Fisher’s parlor yet again.

All things considered, and with how the case was gaining traction in the public eye and in newspapers across the city, it was best to keep David Rodgers away from the Station and from the eyes of people wanting to use Edward Rodger’s death to destroy the company, leaving hundreds of workers without jobs in one of the most unstable economical moments of the globe.

Miss Fisher, after seeing Miss Henderson in the hospital, seemed in slightly better spirit. She still harbored some feelings she clearly distanced from him, but they all seemed to vanish upon seeing their interviewee.

“David!” she almost sighed when she saw him, going to him at once and dragging him to the settee by the hands “I sure hope these days have been kinder to you than to us”

“Everything is a mess, Phryne” he looked down, defeated “I’m trying my best to keep things afloat but those vultures, those investors…”

“I’m sure you’ll do just fine, David” she said, kindly, her hands leaving his finally, to offer a drink which he politely rejected.

Jack knew all the questions he wanted to ask him yet the scene seemed to push him aside once again. He felt like a third wheel, an intruder in a private, intimate moment. He couldn’t help but notice that Miss Fisher hadn’t acted like that with him during their entire re-acquaintance. She hadn't been that comfortable, that... _free_.

Jack Robinson ached for something he didn’t know he had ever had.

“I’m going to have to ask you some further questions, I’m afraid” she was sitting closer to him than was required but the man didn’t seem to mind.

“About Miss Dennings? I wish I knew more but…”

“No, this is about Thomas Osmond and his wife” Jack interjected, uncomfortable, still standing.

“I’m not sure what the fight between Edward and her was about, if that’s what you want to know”

“No, David, we were wondering…” Miss Fisher was less stern than Jack was while explaining “You told me they had a daughter but...you didn’t mention she was sick”

“Sick?” he frowned upon hearing it, clearly surprised “How sick?”

“According to Dr. MacMillan,” she continued with delicacy “She seems to have pneumonia, she’s been in hospital for some time now, she was furthered weakened by malnutrition and poor living conditions”

“Oh god…” David Rodgers put his head in his hands “I didn’t know...did Edward know?”

“We hoped you’d tell us that” Jack interjected, somewhat impatient.

He understood that the man was good, he didn’t have ill intentions but, at the same time, Jack couldn’t help but feeling annoyed at his inaction. He was his brother’s associate, after all, in paper he had as much right to do something, yet he chose the easiest path, hiding from difficult decisions and letting his brother reign in tyranny.  

“I don’t know, I…” he stood, suddenly “I should help them, I...I need to do something for them”

“They’re suspects of your brother’s _murder_ ” Jack’s head was starting to ache “You can’t possibly expect investors to leave you alone if you give money to them, it’d look suspicious, both to them _and_ the police”

“Jack!” Miss Fisher admonished.

“But it isn’t fair…” David Rodgers turned towards Jack “I can’t stand idle while...”

“Of course it isn’t fair!” Jack was losing the little patience he had left.

He felt as if he was the only one in the room making sense. Miss Fisher chose to coddle that man, for whatever reason, while he let things pass with a sense of justice in his heart that didn’t match his actions.  

How much of this would have been solved had the man confronted his brother when he should have? How much peril had these people suffered until they were pushed to do the extreme, clearly risking their own safety to defend themselves from a man his own brother didn’t stand up to?  

How were they going to solve this case with any semblance of justice when the more they knew about the victim, the less of a victim he seemed?

“None of this is fair, Mr. Rodgers” Jack’s tone became less altered, upon seeing the shock on Miss Fisher’s face “But we’re doing the best we can, and that means making difficult decisions, trying to be patient and…” he surreptitiously looked at Miss Fisher “ _trusting_ that the police mean well”

There was silence, a heavy, uncomfortable silence, and Jack felt he may have gone too far. It was difficult to know where his edge was now, where his limit could be, how far this Jack he had never met was willing to go. The disappointment present in Miss Fisher’s eyes seemed to confirm that he had exceeded the limit his other self would have avoided.

“Thank you, David” Miss Fisher accompanied him to the door “I’ll call you if there’s any news”

“Thanks, Phryne” David Rodgers answered and Jack heard their conversation growing dimmer as they reached the front door.

He didn’t know if they were too far or if they were intentionally lowering their voices so that he didn’t hear them. There was something inexplicably uncomfortable on the assumption that Miss Fisher was still keeping things from him.

Jack thought that their distance had been narrowing in the past days but after the whole incident with Miss Henderson, she seemed even farther away.

He couldn’t explain his feelings for her. There were traces of things that mixed together and he was unaware if they were old sensations, attempting to manifest, or if he was just feeling things for her for the first time. If the proximity he ached to have with her was a whisper from his past self, trying to tell him something, or if it was just these days, working with her, which made him long for her company and the trust she wasn’t giving him.

But more than anything, he felt like he was failing. Failing to fill in the shoes of the man she had once loved. And he wondered if she was putting that distance because of how much it hurt her to look at him and not find that man. If she was through with him, after all.

She returned and didn’t mutter a word. She went straight to the glasses, not even looking at him, and the distance felt agonizing.

He decided to do something about it. He couldn’t blame David Rodgers for not acting when he didn’t do it himself.

"Miss Fisher," he approached her with some trepidation, as one would a hurricane "can I ask you a...rather personal question?"

"Of course, Jack" the nonchalant way in which she pronounced his name was starting to become a new memory.

Or maybe it stirred the frayed end of an existing one that wanted to surface. He couldn't be sure.

"I noticed...I couldn't help but noticing your demeanor while approaching Mr. Rodgers" he begun, and noticed her stilling "I was wondering if it means that you've chosen to move on"

She looked stunned at that. Her eyes were bare and open and seemed hurt, but it didn't add up in Jack's mind how she could be. Nothing added up about her.

"What do you mean?" she sounded upset now and he was even more confused than before.

"I would understand if that's the case, I suppose..." he offered, attempting to placate her anger, although he didn't understand it "I can't expect you to wait for me forever...I don't even know if that's what you want"

She frowned at that and crossed her arms, their distance growing with each movement.

"You're making a lot of assumptions about what I want, it seems"

He sighed. He felt exhausted. It was as if he was carrying around the dead-weight of a past he didn't remember and it was taking a toll on him.

"That's all I can do, Miss Fisher...assume" he was too tired to think his words through, too tired to try keeping things in order for a relationship he couldn't remember "I can't understand any of this and I'm trying my hardest but there's not much I can do but assume and guess and I feel I'm constantly doing it all wrong"

"Jack..."

"You don't tell me about our relationship, you all but avoid the topic, I have to find out through clues and puzzle pieces and your perfume on my sheets and your lipstick in my bathroom..." he covered his face with his hand in an attempt to stop the thoughts from overwhelming him "you act friendly in appearance with me, yet at a distance in they ways that matter, and then I see you flirting with other men just as much, sharing the same behavior but being less reserved, less closed off, and...I can't _understand_...I feel like I'm failing you but I don't know why or how to fix it..."

She stayed silent for a while, he didn't dare look at her. He was terrified of what would happen and too exhausted to keep feeling so scared.

She crossed the room and sat down on the settee, inviting him to join her. He did, but kept his distance from her. His body was aching for proximity yet his mind couldn't handle it yet.

"I avoided talking about our relationship because of this, precisely...because of all these things"

"What things?"

"The men, the flirting, my... _behavior_ , if that's what you'd like to call it"

"I didn't mean to offend..."

"It's fine, I understand" she smiled but it didn't reach her eyes "Our relationship is complicated to explain to outsiders, but it's simple enough for us...we have an understanding when it comes to the things I do and the way you feel about them"

Her fingers played with the end of a cushion and her eyes were lost in the pattern embroidered in it.

"We've been navigating this relationship and setting new rules as we go, finding out what we're comfortable and not comfortable with...you never wanted me to change for you and I never wanted you to settle for less than you deserve with me"

"It sounds reasonable"

"It is, but not for an outsider...I can't explain what our relationship is to someone who hasn't been there for its construction"

She looked at him then, sorrow and certainty at equal parts in her eyes.

"I can't tell you that we are happy and content, that we live apart but stay with each other frequently, that I flirt with men and go dancing and occasionally indulge in more than that with them, but I can always come back to you”

She seemed hurt yet more honest than she had been in all those days. Like she could finally open up to him.

“I can’t tell you that you can go days without talking to me for cases yet you can come to me when it's done and I will embrace you as if I've seen you every day…”

She frowned, determined, and Jack could feel the dam of emotions opening, her distance finally disappearing and was hit with the intensity of her feelings.

“I can't explain that to me sex and love are not mutually exclusive and that if I am intimate with a man it doesn't mean I love you less, I can't tell you how much you bask in the idea that we can dream with forever without you having to worry about a marriage and its promises and expectations again, or how much I adore you for not wanting so and understanding…”

She looked at him in the eyes, the depth of hers enthralling, her facade shattering to reveal the woman who was grieving the loss of the man he had been, and Jack Robinson could finally see, without any masks, without any walls between them, the woman that he might have been in love with for the past years.

“Understanding that as long as we're like this, we can be _equals_ , you and I, even if it’s hard for the world to understand it..."

There were tears in her eyes and he felt there was something terribly wrong about that. That it shouldn't be like this. That she shouldn't cry, not for him.

"I can't tell you how much you risk to have this with me, as an officer of the law, and how much I risk for you, giving up the idea of ephemeral that has been my companion for so long...I can't show you how we always meet halfway if you can't remember what our journey even was...and for the Jack that you are, without those memories...all of this might seem like a made up story"

He was unable to respond. It all seemed familiar, in a way, like a pattern on the sand that had been partially washed away by the waves. An adventure he felt he’d heard before, or lived before, but couldn’t actually recall.

"It sounds like a wonderful story" he smiled.

"It is" she smiled back.

"I wish I could remember it"

"So do I"

"I might need some time to...gather my thoughts..."

"I understand"

"I have a nagging fear though, in the back of my heart, of waking up one day, remembering everything and having lost you all the same...of remembering it all too late"

"Jack..." she took his hand "I will never be out of reach for you"

Her eyes trapped his with an intensity that made everything so easy to believe. He had a feeling, buried deep inside him, that he couldn’t quite explain, but it tasted an awful lot like coming home. So much so that his mind wasn’t able to catch up with his heart, and it left him stranded without knowing where to turn.

“I have an impulse now...that I don’t know how prudent would be to follow”

“Those are my favorite kind” she answered with ease.

“I have this nagging feeling that I’ve felt this before and that I’ve rejected that impulse numerous times...with regret”

“What impulse is that?” she moved towards him slightly, her hand impossibly close to his thigh.

“To kiss you, Phryne”

Her eyes opened wide at the mention of her name and the seconds that they passed in silence made him question his decision even more.

“I don’t tend to refrain from that impulse myself very often,” her voice was low, almost a whisper “but I have with you, in the past, more than I remember refraining with anyone else”

“Why was that?”

“I didn’t want to lose you”

“What happened when we finally did?”

She smiled.

“I didn’t lose you”

He smiled back.

“Would that work a second time?”

“Why don’t we find out?”

By the time he noticed, her lips were a breath away and he realized how close she had been while they were talking. She was waiting for him, though, not because she needed prompting but because she respected his hesitation. He caressed her cheek, her skin tingling a memory in his heart, her hair through his fingers a faint whisper of his past.

He inched closer, relishing in every second. The feeling of her skin, the scent of her perfume, a shiver that could be from either or both, it was all calling to him like the tune of a song he desperately wanted to remember.

When his lips met hers, he felt like he had jumped from a cliff. He was falling, fast, a feeling in his stomach that felt like a cocktail of adrenaline and fear, his hands caressing her neck, her back, her waist, as if he was grabbing onto her presence for dear life.

Phryne was a force of nature. She pushed him back on the settee, her hands caressing his neck, his chest, working on the buttons of his shirt with devotion and familiarity. He could feel her all around him, as if he was drowning in her but, at the same time, as if she was the only air he needed. His body reacted to hers with ease, steadier than he thought he’d ever feel. It was like flying, more so than falling.

Flying. A plane. There was a plane, it’s noise cutting the air, clear blue skies above their heads and her smile in the wind. Her lips tasted of hello and goodbye at the same time.

He pulled back, gently, trying to get the image to stick. She noticed his hesitation and stopped as well, her hands still on his chest, feeling his heart, which seemed to be beating out of his own body.

“What’s wrong?”

“You left” he offered, his voice almost a whisper between them, and he knew it didn’t make sense but he had to say it out loud, fearing he would lose it, like a dream that wanted to vanish after waking up “You flew away...on a plane...it was a warm day, the sky was very blue and there was an expanse of grass and a plane waiting for you. And we kissed.”

She stayed silent, her hands still on him, and he couldn’t tell if the one shaking was him or her. Maybe both.

“But that can’t be...because you’re _here_ ”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy that you remembered something about me” she said, her joking tone tinted with relief “but I would have preferred something less dramatic to explain first, like the time I sneaked you into my bedroom in an abstemious household with both alcohol _and_ confidential police evidence”

“Maybe it was the kiss what did it” he tried to smirk and hoped he had the strength to do so.

“I’d be happy to trigger all your memories back, then” she still sounded hesitant, as if she was worried she might scare him away or hurt him in any way.

She must have noticed his doubt because she sighed and put some space between them.

“I _did_ leave,” she clarified, taking his hand “there were pressing circumstances...among other things”

“And you came back?”

“I asked you to come after me, you took the challenge and we met halfway”

He smiled then, and when she smiled back, he realized how scared she’d been of his response to her leaving.

“That seems to be a constant for us, isn’t it?” he offered “the ‘meeting halfway’ theme”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way”

Jack’s memories weren’t coming back full force after a rescuing kiss from Phryne Fisher. It was just that, one vague image after weeks of nothing. Still, he realized, as she held his hand, that whether he remembered her or not, the Jack he was _presently_ also wanted her close to him, and was done putting his distance out of fear.

He would open up. He just hoped she would meet him halfway yet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get ready for some notes!:
> 
> \- First of all, the hiatus. I had announced upon my last update that I was going to take some time to work on another chaptered fic for another fandom, which I did and posted. Still, when I was going to go back to working on this one, I found out there was already another fic with this same trope here, for this same ship, which is a million and a half times better than mine could ever be. And even if the fics are very different in how we handle the trope and in the case they're investigating and even in the time period the story takes place, I considered dropping mine altogether because I have no confidence whatsoever and I thought there wasn't much of a point to continue. But alas, I decided to give my fic a chance and keep trying anyway, so here we are, after I grew some courage. If any of you out there is still reading this and have opinions on this, let me know. I actually considered deleting the fic after this update, but I won't, I actually grew attached to this little monster. 
> 
> \- I haven't finished all the books but I know which ones have Jilly and have read as much as I could to make her justice. Still, my Jilly is a bit interpretative since she isn't as present in the story as other characters are. The reason why I made that scene of her staying behind was initially triggered by me watching action shows and knowing full well someone with my body can't perform some of those stunts even in the worst danger, and that isn't bad. Not everyone is built for break-ins and I wanted a more realistic approach on it. Also, I made [a gifset](http://starberry-cupcake.tumblr.com/post/178394426375/she-embodied-the-instant-in-which-you-know-it-will) for this chapter and Lucy Davis was my choice for Jilly, I think she's the right age and description. 
> 
> \- Phryne sure cried a whole lot in this chapter. I knew when I started writing this fic that my main aim was to invert Phryne and Jack in the relationship, kind of. Phryne was going to be here the one to do all the over-thinking Jack normally does and that entails this angst, I'm afraid. I hope it doesn't seem too OOC for your liking, especially when it comes to her actions in this chapter, but I feel that in the books Phryne often gets a pass for some of her most reckless endeavors, which in the show they tone down because her age is different and her backstory is different. I wanted to bring more of the show aspect in that but add heavier consequences that made Phryne think about what her life is becoming upon accepting more permanence. 
> 
> \- I don't know when the next installment will be but I'm gonna do my best to believe in myself enough to continue, whatever the kudos and comments are like, because I really enjoy writing this story, it's just putting it out here what's scary sometimes. Also if I make at least 1 person in this fandom ship Jilly and Mac as I do, I'll consider it an effort worthy of partaking. 
> 
> Sorry for any mistakes and thanks a lot for sticking around, I appreciate it immensely! ♥


	4. Unpleasant truths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"It was impossible to blame this girl, this child, for everything that had happened to them. It was impossible to hate her, and he knew Miss Fisher understood that"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Case recap (aka what you know so far):**
> 
> Edward Rodgers, main chairman of Rodgers & Rodgers Factory Enterprise, was found dead at 7am in his office by his secretary, Miss Hastings. Phryne arrived around 7 30 to find a girl scurrying away with a scarf in her hands and, after registering the scene, found traces of a shattered cup on the floor. Edward Rodgers, however, was shot in the head with a .38 revolver and Dr. MacMillan determined that the cause of death had been the shot, performed around 1 am the previous night. However, she did find traces of poison, which meant that had the man not been shot, he would have died regardless. 
> 
> The main suspects thus far are two. On the one hand, there’s Thomas Osmond, former army superior of Rodgers and current employee whose wife, Lena, the cleaning lady of the night shift, had been dismissed the prior morning after what Miss Hastings described as a “violent altercation”. However, upon registering their lodgings, which were in very bad condition due to the economic circumstances, they didn’t find the revolver nor any incriminating evidence against them. Phryne discovered that Thomas and Lena’s daughter, a 5 year old, is in hospital due to pneumonia which was worsened by malnutrition and poor living conditions. 
> 
> The other suspect is the girl who Phryne saw, identified by the victim’s brother, David Rodgers, as Miss Anna Dennings, a young girl who entered employment after David found her working at Strano’s and caused her dismissal for a misunderstanding. Phryne and Jack found that Anna had manipulated the situation to be dismissed in front of David so she could get a job in the company. They also found out that she had lied about her name and living premises, her true name is Annabella Moretti and two young Italian men, possibly connected to her (Jack suspects at least one of them is her brother), crashed Phryne and Jack when they registered her supposed house (an empty lot), causing Jack to suffer from retrograde amnesia as a result of a concussion, and also harmed Jillian Henderson when she stayed behind, after Phryne, Mac and her went to investigate. 
> 
> David Rodgers, the victim’s brother, is attempting to take over the company, something he always avoided and left to his more aggressive brother, who he knew wasn’t a good person, yet David was never able to stand up to him. He has Prudence Stanley’s support since he has been a constant benefactor to her charities and Prudence wants to avoid him getting too involved in the case as to not lose his support and for the company workers to not lose their employment. 
> 
> **Specific warnings for this chapter:** non- graphic mentions of sexual abuse, psychological abuse, violence and subjects such as harassment in the workplace, xenophobia and the recalling of past murders.

The Hispano Suiza stood before Jack, exuding familiarity. It lay there, in pristine condition, repaired and unscratched, as he wished he had been.

Miss Fisher took Jack to the mechanics to pick up the car in an attempt to trigger more memories. And Jack could sense some forming, but they did not make sense.

He could see the car, crashed and broken, a superimposed scene, the ghost of the car that stood in front of him filling in the gaps of his memory. He could see it bent and crumbled, a woman laying over the steering wheel. Unresponsive, gone. Her body was bent forward, he couldn’t see her face, her racing gear covering every inch of her frame and her hair. Hair that he assumed was raven black and cut in a bob.  

The garage also disappeared, to give way to a road, trees, grass, expanses of landscape and the smell of death and gasoline.

He shivered.

“Are you alright, Jack?” her voice called him back to the present and her existence gave him some solace.

He realized that he was sweating, shivering and his hands were clenched so hard he was hurting his palms. It couldn’t be right. She was there, beside him.

“Did you remember the crash?” she insisted, her voice a puddle of sounds he could barely make out in the migraine that his head was embedded in.

“I...I saw” he spoke in the past tense but he knew he was lying, the images of her corpse in that crashed vehicle wouldn’t leave him, not even when he closed his eyes “a crash but...it was different”

Miss Fisher noticed his tension, the tremble in his voice, and moved closer, tentatively touching his arm.

“What happened, Jack?” she sounded reassuring yet scared “Let me help you”

Nothing made sense. Her corpse in the crashed car, the scenery surrounding it, the fear in her voice which he was _sure_ wasn’t meant to be there.

“A dead woman” he settled on saying, because he couldn’t say the alternative, it was ridiculous and wrong and...disarming “in your car...crashed in a road”

She froze. The hand that was attempting reassurance fell from his arm, limp with uncertainty. She avoided his gaze and turned to her car, the pristine one she could see, not the ghost he couldn’t escape from.

“You keep doing it” she whispered, and he was certain he wasn’t meant to hear it, but he did anyway “Remembering the bad things”

He looked at her, afraid, and pleaded for an answer. Her eyes didn’t meet his, lost in the car, in her own memories that she didn’t seem willing to share with him.

Jack felt powerless. Frustrated. Tired of depending on others to fill in the gaps of his own life. How easier it would be to start over. Go somewhere, anywhere, far from the people he kept disappointing, looking for new friends who wouldn’t know what to expect at all. It would be easier for him, easier for _them_ , if he just wasn’t there completely, instead of gone only halfway.

But then she reached for him, tentatively, her hand shaking slightly, her eyes still lost elsewhere but her hand looking for his, grasping his, pleading patience.

And he knew he couldn’t go. Something inexplicable tied him to her and his heart was a hundred steps ahead from his brain. He would have to listen to it.

They stayed silent all the way to the Station and she drove the car with less speed that he imagined she would be able to accomplish.

* * *

 

“I think it’s logical, that he remembers first those things that were most impactful for your relationship”

Mac was sitting on the armrest of the sofa, occupied by a still bruised but less pale and battered Jillian. Dot was serving the tea in a nearby couch.

“Is that supposed to mean that the most impactful things from our relationship are the negative ones?” Phryne whined “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Normally, yes” Mac continued, sipping her tea “The mind has a tendency of capturing sadness and fear more strongly than it does happiness and peace...hence the ‘you don’t know what you have until you lose it’ phrase”

Jillian elbowed Mac’s leg and looked at her with a reprimand stuck on her pout.

“What Liz is trying to say, Phryne,” she shot daggers at Mac before turning to Phryne with compassion “Is that this _is_ progress and surely the positive memories will soon arrive as well”

Phryne must have looked unconvinced because Jillian was eager to change the subject.

“So, how are my male friends doing in City South?”

Jillian’s tone was nonchalant in nature, but the slight tremor of her hands spoke more of what had transpired between them than words could describe.

Mac had told Phryne in confidence that Jillian still had nightmares about what had happened. She woke up scared and desperate, crying most times, and Mac comforted her as long as she needed. She was startled with sudden physical demonstrations, shaky in her demeanor, but tried her best to move past it.

Phryne knew exactly how it felt.

Jillian had aided a lot of women in her position. She had taken upon herself the task of defending women from situations of violence and aggression, which was something Phryne had always admired and respected of her, considering most lawyers saw marital altercations as ‘part of the privacy of married life’ and overlooked violence towards young women, suggesting them that making ‘a spectacle’ of it would taint their reputation further.

Which was why it baffled Phryne that Jillian had not wanted to press charges.

“They are to talk with Jack and Concetta today, Jack has a suspicion he wants to follow so he hasn’t let them go yet”

“He thinks they’re related to her in some way” Jillian interjected.

Phryne, Mac and Dot looked at her with surprise.

“You _knew_?” Phryne stretched her arm towards Dot’s direction and the young woman offered her a cup of tea.

“I suspected it” Jillian sighed “If I hadn’t been in this business for so long, if I hadn’t seen what violence and injustice does to people, maybe I’d be less conflicted about letting them be punished...but I have seen enough to understand that those two kids are terrified out of their minds, Phryne, they weren’t doing it out of spite but because they think their livelihood depends on it”

“That’s absurd!” Mac stood up abruptly and lowered her tone when she noticed how Jillian flinched “Jilly, if they have money issues there’s a lot of ways they can go about it rather than beat an innocent to a pulp”

“You know how it is, Liz” Jillian’s eyes were severe “There’s more to it than smarts or opportunity, not everyone can better themselves and definitely not those who can’t even communicate with people around them...but it’s not _their_ livelihood they were protecting, but that of someone they love”

“You think they were protecting the girl, Miss?” Dot inquired “The girl Miss Fisher was looking for?”

“I think there’s that and there’s something else...when they were beating me I…”

Jillian stopped. She closed her eyes, let herself breathe. They waited, patiently, until she could continue.

“There was rage, yes, but not aimed at me...I think I was just...an example...a representation” she looked at Phryne.

“Of what?” Phryne frowned, uncertain.

“Of those like me, like _us_...those who oppress them”

Phryne found reality clashing against her like a wave in the midst of a storm.

There were so many layers to the situation at hand, so many ways in which a crisis of this magnitude could hit people.

She had considered David’s importance in the situation and how the loss of him would impact Aunt Prudence’s charity work. She had considered Mr. Osmond’s daughter and how she had been worsened by the only living conditions her parents could afford. She had considered Anna Dennings’s job proposition and the prospect for a better paycheck...she hadn’t considered why, though, she had to change her name.

Why Annabella Moretti had transformed into Anna Dennings, why she had pretended to live somewhere she didn’t, away from the lodgings she probably did reside in, with a family she pretended to be dead.

Concetta had said it, hadn’t she?

> _“Nice young girl, we gave her work when her father left, poor child, everyone in the neighborhood knows the story, that poor woman abandoned with three young kids and Annabella having to work to help them”_

The oldest sibling with a mother heartbroken by rejection and loss. The only one able to speak the language of the land they went to for a better future. A land that turned against them as soon as times were hard. A land that was pushing those different away from jobs because they felt they had to leave them to the locals. A land that was turning them away because they worked for less, because they let themselves be exploited, without seeing that they had no other choice.

Phryne reached towards Jillian and softly kissed her brow.

“You’re a formidable woman, Jillian Henderson” she said, as she stood up and offered her cup back to Dot “Please, you all stay, Mr. Butler prepared a feast and I’d hate it if it went to waste”

“Do you want me to go with you, Miss?” Dot offered, standing up.

“No Dot, you stay and have a meal, I’ll let you all know how this unfolds” she smiled towards Mac “Be nice to her, she’s a genius”

“I know” Mac smiled back and looked fondly towards Jillian, their eyes locked in a bond Phryne could only be thankful to be able to still witness.

* * *

 

When Miss Fisher entered the interrogation room, unannounced, he was not even surprised. Startled, maybe, but not surprised.

He did not know if it was just his rational mind putting together the puzzle pieces that were Miss Fisher’s actions, or if one of the many cobwebs drowning his memory was starting to unveil a past of shared profession.

In any case, even if taken aback, he didn’t intend on asking her what she was doing there or question how appropriate it was for a private investigator to witness an official interrogation, considering her client’s interests may be implicated.

But Jack assumed that, after all that the case had done to them, Phryne Fisher’s interest exceeded what the initial request for her involvement might have been. It was personal for her now, as much as it was for himself.

She greeted Jack and Concetta with a nod, after Collins let her in, and stood, her back to the wall, farther from the suspects than he would have assume she’d be. There was resentment in her eyes, a severe frown that revealed conflicted feelings, and after what happened to Miss Henderson, he was more worried of what she’d do to the suspects than of what they could do to her.

“Are they both related to her or just one?” she asked, from her perch behind Jack.

“How did you…” Concetta begun asking, but her tone changed when she turned to look at her “Just one, I hadn’t seen him in a long time but Nicola is her brother”

She pointed at the youngest one of the two, the one who was most often scared, the one who Miss Fisher claimed had crashed them.

“Jilly told me that she felt they were protecting someone...and something else that clued me in”

Miss Fisher was stoic, and it felt unusual to Jack, for what he had seen in the past days, that she did not have a smart and flirtatious comment hidden in the corner of a smirk.

“Tell them I know why they did it, Concetta, that I know why she lied about her name...that we never intended to hurt them”

“Hurt them?” Jack felt at sea, wishing he could read her as much as he imagined he had once been able to do.

A part of him wanted to fume at being commandeered in his own interrogation room, but another part, a more instinctual one, trusted Miss Fisher more blindly than he would have ever expected himself capable of.

“Tell them that I’m incredibly upset, that I can’t forgive them” Miss Fisher stared, unwavering and unabashed “but that I understand why Annabella couldn’t tell David her name...and I’m sorry for it”

Concetta Strano looked shocked yet understanding. There was respect in her eyes, maybe even gratitude, and Jack felt once more how there was a conversation happening in another plane of understanding that he could not access. He wondered if the old Jack would have understood or been just as lost as he was.

Concetta turned to the men and, with a layer of tranquil security she hadn’t had before, conveyed the message to them.

“It’s important that she appears, Nicola” Miss Fisher continued, looking only at the youngest “We can’t help her if she doesn’t”

At Concetta’s translation, the other young man, the one who wasn’t Nicola, started shouting, prompting Collins to approach him at the table.

“He’s saying that you...that you can’t understand...among other less cordial things” Concetta translated, blushing at the positively aggressive epithets he was probably using.

A part of Jack’s brain could interpret a couple, it seemed, and they were making him terribly uneasy.

“ _Listen_ ” Miss Fisher didn’t shout, she commanded.

Her tone was dry, serious, it cut the room in half like a blade made of ice. She silenced the shouting with merely the way in which her frown was set, her eyes dripping anger and resentment but also pain and pity, her lips a thin line of blood red, her stance confident and stoic.

She stood beside Jack, her hands on her hips, her unwavering sight set on the two young men. Jack wondered if he had ever seen her this feral before.

“Let me and Concetta spell it out for you as clear as we possibly can,” she continued with the same mixture of pity and resentment, of anger and pain “Annabella’s case is getting worse the more you two keep trying to help her”

At Concetta’s translation, the most aggressive of the two men was silenced, not by a threat this time but by a clear and overpowering sense of dread.

“The case against Annabella wasn’t as solid as to condemn her for murder, with a good lawyer and, sensing what this story might carry within, considering the victim in question, she could have been released easily” Miss Fisher continued.

It was a rather simplified take on what might have occurred, but true in essence. Jack let her speak uninterrupted and heard how Concetta translated as faithfully as she could.

“Yet that good lawyer, probably the best lawyer in all of Melbourne, who specializes in cases like hers, is the lady you two mercilessly beat up”

Her eyes were sharp and cutting and she let time pass for Concetta to translate with the gravity the statement deserved.

“Furthermore, you also attempted to harm Jack and I in an attack that could have been lethal, she stays on the run and you are keen on not cooperating with the police…” she stalled “I understand your intentions may have been good, but all you have done is worsen the case for both Annabella and yourselves”

She took a chair, placed it gracefully but forcefully between Jack and Concetta, and sat down, never breaking eye contact with them, especially the oldest one.

“If it were for me, I’d leave it be” she crossed her arms “I’d let you two continue digging your graves and Annabella’s for as long as you please, considering you have harmed me and the people I love” she snarled “I don’t owe you anything”

She let the statement simmer, let it rest between them after Concetta’s translation, let it drown both of the men in its meaning and her feelings of anger.

“But that lawyer you harmed is a good woman and she wants to help you because she knows how unfair you’ve been treated just for having been born elsewhere, and this man” she nodded towards Jack “is a good man and he wants fairness and justice, not some bland sense of lawful correctness, so I’m doing the impossible and warning you, _for the last time_ , that if you don’t cooperate, it’s over for the three of you and Annabella will face more serious consequences than those for merely a failed attempt at poisoning a potential abuser”

She leaned in slightly, her tone lowering but her icy demeanor still intact.

“ _Are we clear_?” she sentenced, a full stop on her declaration.

The younger one, Nicola, nodded eagerly and looked at the older one with more of a spine than Jack had seen him reveal in all his days there.

Their dynamic reminded him of the Rodgers brothers, a distorted mirror image of what the two men would have been like, one shouting with bravado and causing destruction and the other one unable to put his foot down. Young Nicola, it seemed, had more character than David Rodgers ever had.

The older kid sighed, resigned. It was only then that Jack noticed how tired he seemed. How much older he looked, with those exhausted angry eyes, than the age he actually had.

It was Nicola the one to finally speak and direct them to where Annabella Moretti had been hiding.

* * *

 

“Phryne, my sweet” Klara strutted across the street with her jovial smile.

Phryne could not help the shiver that ran down her spine. It was never good for her to ask for Klara’s help, not that she didn’t deliver, she _always_ did, but the cases which required it most often turned dirty and emotionally jarring.

Klara’s youthful looks never faded. She was already in her mid 20s but didn’t look a day older than 16. Needless to say, she still reigned supreme in Fitzroy.

She frowned when she noticed Jack.

“What did I tell you about bringing in police men, Phryne?” she scolded “Especially male ones, I wouldn’t mind Jones paying me a visit, though, I miss her terribly”

There was something Mac had mentioned about WPC Jones and Klara seeing each other, some gossip Klara had told Mac during a check-up, but Phryne much rather preferred asking Jones about it. As a female police officer, Jones had always been keen on helping when women in danger were involved, and she found herself in Fitzroy, among the brothels, most often than not for that reason. Ever since a case in which Klara had helped them catch a predator, the two women had been a force to be reckoned with when working together.

Still, Klara had always made Phryne uneasy. She was a dangerous gal.

“We’ll be quick, I promise, Jack will play nice” she answered.

“I will?” he asked, confused at the whole interaction.

“You better” Klara threatened “I’m doing no favors for you otherwise”

“We’re looking for a girl” Phryne said, ignoring Jack’s fidgeting.

“I assumed so, Phryne, what else would you look for in here?” she smirked in that dark way she often did which made Phryne shiver all over again.

“An Italian, Annabella Moretti is her name, her family seems to be scattered all over the place...she’s possibly hiding”

Klara’s expression changed. Her demeanor, often playful and rather carefree was replaced by something more somber.

“Phryne, I can’t let you take her” she sentenced.

There was strength in her demeanor, out of place in her small, scrawny countenance but at home in her commanding face.

“Please, Klara, we want to help...” Phryne’s energy was dwindling, she felt she had been carrying this entire case on her shoulders, every turn of events making it more difficult, more impossible to end.

“I know what you’ll say, you’ll want Jilly to help her and…” Klara started, but was promptly silenced by another voice.

“Miss Henderson was heavily beaten and attacked by Miss Moretti’s brother and another acquaintance” Jack spoke with his distinctive calmness, his focus, and for a second Phryne forgot that he wasn’t entirely himself.

At that, Klara stayed silent. Phryne knew how she felt about male aggression, and even though she had not always seen eye to eye with Jillian, she respected her as much as she did Mac.

“Things have become more convoluted than what I assume Miss Moretti planned...Miss Fisher and I were also attacked by them, and we know it was not with ill intent as much as fear and desperation” he took off his hat and looked at Klara pleadingly “We all need this to be over, and the sooner the better for her, trust us”

Phryne’s heart skipped a beat at the sound of him saying ‘us’ again and scolded herself for being so sentimental. She loathed that kind of stuff. Still, it felt good, familiar, to hear him say it.

Klara sighed, resigned, her frown still in place, and turned around.

“Follow me”

She guided them through the shabby streets, across all the working girls and paying men, some of whom scattered at seeing Jack, and into a battered looking apartment building.  

All the implications of the girl living there were swarming inside Phryne’s head. She had been drowning in possibilities since Nicola Moretti had given them the address, fearing how much worse this case was going to get before it was closed.

“Is she…” Phryne asked, hesitantly, as Klara slowed her pace before a battered wooden door “Is she working?”

Klara shook her head.

“Her mother did, came to us in desperation, trying to save her kids” she turned to Phryne, her voice stern “Husband left when things got tough, you know the type”

Phryne nodded, frowning.

“She started making good coin with Italian clients, they’re very picky with their women” Klara crossed her arms, leaning against the closed door “But she wanted her daughter to have a ‘proper life’, she figured speaking the language gave her some advantage, and then that fancy restaurant gave her a job”

“Strano’s” Phryne offered.

“That’s the one”

Klara shivered visibly and Phryne dreaded what could affect her so, someone who had seen as much as she had in all her years working there.

“It’s a tough spot, but we were helping, all the girls here were” Klara shook her head “Marcela came in with four kids, two little girls of 9 and 5, a boy of 15 and Annabella herself”

“You offered them lodgings?” Phryne inquired.

Klara pointed at the door right behind her, the shabby, battered wooden door of the building that seemed to house some of the workers of the area.

“We kept the young girls here the most, if they left, they were accompanied, they were protected at all times” Klara’s sight was unwavering and Phryne had no doubt she would have been able to kill if a man so much as touched a little girl in her area “The boy left soon after, he was...unsettled”

“It’s a tough age, old enough to know what his mother’s sacrifice was, too young to be able to properly help” Jack’s tone was guarded.

He was respectful with the situation and Phryne was thankful. She didn’t know how this Jack was to react to it all, to Klara, to Fitzroy, to the fact that if they wanted to do this right, he was going to have to do it as Phryne said.

It was reassuring to know that he was not anymore the old Jack of their earliest acquaintance, even if he wasn’t yet her Jack from before the accident.

“They were both impatient, but the boy was even more so, he started following another kid, the son of someone they had come to the country with, and did what young men do when they can’t keep still”

“What is that?” Jack inquired.

“Make trouble” Klara’s frown left no room for doubt “They were trying to get on the good side of the Camorra, but they never took them seriously” she shook her head again “Young boys playing pretend, trying to be men, they just gave them small jobs to get them out of the way...but Marcela was scared to death for him...that’s when things started to go from bad to worse”

Klara made a pause, as if she was considering her options. She looked back, towards the wooden door, debating with herself. She sighed, resigned, and turned towards Phryne again.

“I’ll tell you the story because I trust that you’ll know best, Phryne, even though it’s Annie’s story to tell and not mine...I believe that you _do_ want what’s best for all involved”

The way in which Klara called her ‘Annie’ brought back all the lies, all the things she had said to hide, the false name, the address in the empty lot, the accident…

“I will try my best” Phryne was cold, colder than she would have in any other case “It isn’t easy, when so much has been taken from me because of her lies”

She felt Jack’s stare on her but she missed his hand, his subtle touch, the small things he would have done, unprompted, had he been the same he used to. Klara couldn’t know all the implications, but she surely understood the sentiment.

“Marcela died months ago” Klara’s statement was strong, final “She was murdered”

Jack grew restless beside her, but Phryne stopped him with a look.

“Why didn’t you notify…?” he started.

“Me” Phryne interrupted him.

She turned to find him staring, alarmed. She shook her head, pleading for him to let the speaking to her. Treading with Klara and the darkest paths of Fitzroy wasn’t something he could do, not in the state he was in.

“I’m sure this was not a case for the police, not with how your area operates, but I could have helped” she said to Klara.

“It was messy, Phryne, too messy for anyone to help at all” she scratched her short pixie hair “Marcela was killed by a member of the Camorra that her son’s friend had sent to her”

There was nothing in this case that was simple, nothing that was devoid of the terrible reality they were submerged in.

“In a desperate attempt to win their favor, I assume, that other kid used Nicola’s mother as leverage, offered her like free merchandise, I don’t know...the man arrived drunk and violent, I tried to stop him because I’ve seen how those things turn out, but Marcela told me to leave it to her, she wanted to talk to him, she said, about her son”

Klara crossed her arms, distant, looking at the wooden floor as if it could tell her the story it had witnessed.

“I took the girls, Annie was working, so Marcela gave them to me, and I left her...by the time I came back she was bleeding on the floor, dead”

Klara stopped, her words lingering on the hallway, hauntingly keeping the memory of the night as if they could still smell the blood, hear the screams.

“We couldn’t press the matter, it was the goddamn Mafia, Phryne…” she shook her head, desperate “it meant risking the entire livelihood and safety of my girls, of Fitzroy, of Marcela’s daughters, I couldn’t…” she sighed “After that, Annie was on her own to support the girls, the boy wasn’t allowed here anymore, him and his friend were the only ones somewhat responsible that the girls here could blame, and they didn’t have the Camorra to back them up, so they were banned...I suppose the boy regrets it, to this day…”

Phryne remembered Nicola’s fear, his terror when holding the wheel, and imagined his anxiety, his utmost panic at causing harm to his sister as much as he had his mother. A lost 15 year old boy trying to grow up faster than he could.

“So Annabella faked her way into Rodgers & Rodgers, to get a better salary to support her sisters” Phryne tried filling in the gaps.

“It wasn’t easy, the girl’s Italian, there’s a lot of animosity towards them these days, and her living premises are...less than respectful for a job interview” Klara leaned on the door again, still with arms crossed “The only reason why she didn’t take work here was because it was the only thing her mother had always asked of her, to get out of here”

“Do you know what happened with Edward Rodgers?” Phryne asked, feeling how all the pieces fit together.

“That is _definitely_ Annie’s story to tell” she turned towards the door “I wanted to give you a recount of the past, because I reckon it makes more sense in context, don’t you think? To know which limit a girl’s been pushed to in order to bite”

She smirked, that cold and venomous smile Phryne had always feared a bit, over her shoulder.

“You know that well, don’t you Phryne?”

At that, she opened the door.

* * *

 

The room was just that, a room, a rectangle with four walls, one window, and two battered mattresses. There had been attempts at cleaning, but there were a few dark spots on the old, wooden floor, that Jack’s trained sense recognized as dried blood.

There were some things scattered on the floor, very few belongings, a chair and a small table, some candles, bits and pieces of a confined life.

Two girls were playing on one of the mattresses, one of them holding close a beautiful, delicate scarf which Jack assumed had been the one Miss Fisher had seen the day after the murder.

A girl, frail and lanky, with chestnut brown hair in waves and lost, sullen eyes, was standing next to the only window.

“You found me” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

It sounded a bit like resignation and a bit like relief. As if she both dreaded the moment but also had been waiting eagerly for it all to end, come what may.

Just like the two boys, she looked out of place, an old woman in a girl’s body, aged with that kind of weight that grief puts upon you.

“Klara, could you take the little girls with you for a while?” Miss Fisher asked “I’ll take them home later, let Dot give them some food and clothes”

Klara nodded and extended both of her hands towards the girls. The oldest one of the two looked at Miss Fisher with trepidation before exiting the room. Jack closed the door behind them.

“Are you going to arrest me?” Annabella asked, not looking at them “I can pay for my sisters’ care, I don’t have much but…”

“We need to talk first” Jack interrupted.

He could sense the tension and exhaustion in Miss Fisher’s body, her demeanor, and understood how draining the whole ordeal had been for her. He was also tired and emotionally compromised, but he didn’t have her memories of all they had lost.

Jack touched Miss Fisher’s arms gently, guiding her to take a seat on the only chair available, nodding at her sharp look, attempting to convey that he understood, that it was his turn to talk, that she deserved to lower her guard for a while.

He understood Miss Fisher more and more with each passing day and, even though he didn’t quite remember their dynamic as much as she would have wanted him to, he assumed that asking her to take a step back was normally futile. The fact that she conceded and sat down showcased how exhausted she was.

“Miss Moretti, are you aware of the activities that your brother and his friend have been carrying on in your defense?” he took of his coat, placing it on the chair behind Miss Fisher, and placed his hat on the table.

“Activities?” at that, she finally looked at them, her eyes still somewhat lost but trying to focus.

“Did he tell you what they were doing?” Jack replaced his normal stern policeman demeanor for something softer, more useful for this situation than any accusatory tone would allow “What they’ve been engaging in to try to protect you?”

Annabella shook her head. She didn’t fit the image Jack and Miss Fisher had formed of her, not the demeanor of someone who would plan cunningly to poison her boss out of some calculated sense of objection or a _femme fatale_ who would lie to David Rodgers in a dramatic fashion to get a position. She seemed tired, desperate, a lost girl with no more room to run away to.

It was impossible to blame this girl, this _child_ , for everything that had happened to them. It was impossible to hate her, and he knew Miss Fisher understood that.

“Nicola and Lorenzo told me they were going to protect us...” she visibly shivered “They wanted to help me, they didn’t mean...what did they _do_?”

She searched them with her eyes, unfocused, tired. It was so much easier to imagine this was all a calculated plan to harm, it was so much more rewarding to bring in the law when it was for justice’s sake.

But this had not been an easy case, no matter how simple the narrowing of the suspects had been.

“Miss Moretti, I need to ask you what happened with Mr. Edward Rodgers that night” Jack didn’t move, kept his distance towards her, respected her space “What your brother and his friend did, even if with good intentions, has made things worse for your case...even if you could face charges for what you did, with a good understanding lawyer you could have been helped...Edward Rodgers didn’t die because of you”

At that she snorted. It was an exhausted expression, with less attitude than intended, but it was the most lively she had been in their entire exchange until then.

“That shot ruined me” she answered “I panicked, didn’t know what to do, I ran and left it all be and then got restless, I knew the cup had been there I knew...it wasn’t supposed to go that way and...I knew that the moment the police found me, I was done for, there’s no lawyer who would help me”

“You’re wrong” Miss Fisher’s voice was harder than his, much less understanding.

His memory itched, like a scab wanting to come out. Something with their dynamic was wrong, something was out of place. He felt as if it was a puzzle he had forgotten how to put together yet the pieces felt askew. It wasn’t like that with them, he could tell.

“I have a friend who would have helped you, knowing your situation” she continued, stern still “Jillian Henderson, ask Klara if you don’t believe me, she would have moved heaven and earth to defend someone like you...but your brother and his friend beat her to a pulp some nights ago”

Annabella covered her mouth with her hand in shock. She looked at Miss Fisher with tears forming in her eyes.

“Why?” she shook her head “I didn’t...I never intended them to...is she...is she…”

“She’s alive” Miss Fisher continued stern, cold, and Jack still felt, somewhere in his heart, that it was wrong, out of place “And so are we, after they hit us with a car and left us for dead”

Annabella let herself fall on the wooden floor, her body slowly dragging across the wall.

“I’m so...so sorry” she whimpered, trying to control her emotions, but was unable to continue talking without starting to cry.

“I have all the reasons in the world to hate you” Miss Fisher continued, relentless.

Jack turned to her, about to chastise her, to plead for her understanding, but was stopped by the sight of her. Her eyes, certain and stoic, kept a shed of pain, of sorrow, and he knew that, once again, the conversation was for her to command.

His heart skipped a beat with a jolt, a memory his head could not conjure but his soul seemed to relish in.

“I’ve lost so much on this, I stood awake at night wishing I hadn’t seen you that morning, that I hadn’t watched you scurrying away with that scarf, that I hadn’t found a piece of the cup you used, so that we could have let this whole affair trace back to whoever shot him alone…”

Annabella’s tears fell from her eyes as if they were Miss Fisher’s, as if all the crying Miss Fisher could not do was projected back to the girl across them.

“But I know what it is like” she continued, her frown impassive “To be without hope and taken advantage of, I know how it feels...the pain of the paws of a man on your body”

At that, Annabella bit her lip, looking at Miss Fisher as if she could be finally released from a burden she hadn’t been able to share with anyone else.

“What did Edward Rodgers do to you?” Miss Fisher asked, finally.

It was not how things typically went for Jack Robinson in interrogations, not that he remembered. That the crucial, determining question to inquire on a murder was what the victim had done to the accused. But this, he guessed, was going to be repeated as they continued this case. Law and justice were in two entirely different paths when it came to the murder of Edward Rodgers.

It took some moments for the girl to start talking. Jack noticed that it was not a matter of hesitation from her part as much as it was a question of ordering the mess that her life had become. It felt as if the case had taken an eternity to unfold, for all involved.

“It started with Lena” Annabella said, from her place on the wooden floor “I didn’t...I don’t want to implicate her, she’s good, Lena is my friend…”

“Lena Osmond, you mean?” Jack asked “Her husband is another of the suspects, so it wouldn’t be your statement what implicates her…”

Annabella started shivering, trembling with dread, her hands on her mouth again. Jack knew she needed comfort but felt powerless in order to give it. He imagined that the touch of a man was the last she wanted under the circumstances.

Miss Fisher stood from the rickety chair, walking towards the hunched figure of Annabella. She smoothed the back of her white pants and sat beside her on the floor, her back leaning on the wall, her body inches away from the girl’s.

She didn’t say anything, didn’t open her mouth, just sat, silent, calm, her legs folded in, her hands on the floor, her eyes looking towards the door.

It was a gesture of understanding, more so than words. Annabella’s breathing normalized in seconds.

“Mr. Rodgers was very...sleazy...inappropriate...but he was focused on Lena the most” she said, still with a low, tired voice “Lena worked the night shifts, she started around the time I did, and he was very...intent on her, more than the others”

“He propositioned her?” Jack inquired.

“Nothing about Edward Rodgers was a proposition, more of a demand” Annabella shivered involuntarily “It seemed, for what I heard, that since Lena arrived, his worst was reserved to her, and that...well, it made the girls feel relieved...which is horrible, I know but…”

“Better her than them” Miss Fisher nodded, turning towards her.

“I don’t know if Lena was giving in or not, nobody did…” she dried her eyes with the back of her hand “But we knew that when she wasn’t, he took it out on the other girls, which made them resent Lena...I never did though, she’s married, has a daughter, her husband works there, I don't know him but I know she loves him...”

She inhaled deeply, suppressing sobs.

“I talked to David about it, he was nice to me, kind” she shook her head “But he avoided the matter altogether, he just told me to ‘avoid Edward’ and ‘you know how he gets’”

Jack’s palms closed in fists. This was the negligence he feared from David Rodgers, the kind of cowardice that harms as much as harm itself.

“Things were getting out of hand, the more the business was compromised, the more stressed Mr. Rodgers was and the more he took it out on us...and on Lena” she sighed “I knew it was a matter of time, I felt trapped, I knew that being friends with Lena, the only friend of hers there, would make me his second choice...and then another girl, and so on...we had no way out, not if we wanted to keep our jobs”

“Was that when you thought of the poison?” Miss Fisher inquired.

“I considered it but I never thought I’d act upon it” she bit her nails, anxiously “I knew that if I got caught my family was going to be lost, but I couldn’t lose the job and I knew Edward Rodgers wasn’t a man you could bargain with...he didn’t just use women for pleasure, he used them to discharge the rage he couldn’t in other men...we were like dogs to him”

“But then Lena got fired” Miss Fisher added, filling in the gaps of Annabella’s story.

“That morning changed everything…” she folded into herself, her legs tucked towards her chest, her arms hugging them shakily.

“Miss Hastings said Mrs. Osmond was aggressive towards Mr. Rodgers, that there was an altercation” Jack recalled, taking the chair vacated by Miss Fisher.

“She went away crying, she crossed me on the hallway and said ‘I can’t anymore, Annie’” Annabella shivered “I saw the bruises on her neck, the ripped shirt and Mr. Rodgers looming down the hallway, looking at us, unfazed…” she shook her head “That sealed it for me, that made it all worse...I was already a clear second choice, but he assumed being friends, hurting me would also hurt Lena...so I got his orders that afternoon”

“Orders?” Miss Fisher asked.

“He demanded me to covered for Lena’s cleaning shift at night, with all it implied”

Miss Fisher was the one to shiver at that and Jack felt the dread taking over him as well.

“I was instructed to leave work as per usual and come back at night instead of staying in, he thought I didn’t understand but I knew…” she bit her nails erratically, reminding Jack of how young she was “I didn’t come here, I went to find Nicola and Lorenzo, I was scared, I...they wanted to attack him but I knew that would turn bad for us, so Lorenzo used his money to buy the poison...it was supposed to look natural”

Annabella stalled, still shaky but more present, less unfocused, losing the burden of a truth that was destroying her from the inside.

“I planned to give him the poison, leave him to die and come back in the morning to dispose of the cup” she turned to Miss Fisher “He had heart problems, I thought it’d look natural, and then David, kind sweet David, would be able to help us all…” she reached for Miss Fisher, her shaky hand over the other’s delicate manicured one “Me, Lena, her daughter, her husband, all the girls in the floor, all the workers he abused...I thought I would help us all...and nobody would care if he died, nobody would ask…”

“Nobody would want to dig up an investigation, being the hated man he was” Miss Fisher concluded “Everyone would have _wanted to believe_ it was nature’s call, divine intervention, and let it go”

“But for the shot” Jack sentenced, with a voice he was almost unable to find.

Annabella withdrew her hand for atop Miss Fisher’s, going back to her hunched position, hiding as much as she could as she lay herself bare from all the lies and deceit.

“I came in around twelve thirty, as he instructed me” the girl’s voice was small, shy “He started...touching me but I told him I’d get him something to drink first, he didn’t say no to coffee with bourbon…” she fidgeted with her hands, restless “It took me about 10 minutes, I was shaking so badly...I gave him the drink and told him I’d go and undress for him…”

Miss Fisher reached out then, tentatively, and Annabella took her hand.

“I was leaving him to die, exiting the offices, when I heard the shot...it was about one, maybe ten to one at the time” she grabbed Miss Fisher’s hand, held it tight, as if it was all that kept her together “I ran, I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t know if it was someone else or if Mr. Rodgers had found out, somehow, what I tried to do, and wanted to kill me…” she sobbed “Nothing made sense, I fled here to look after the girls, but I was restless, I...I wanted to leave it be, I couldn’t run away, I didn’t have enough money…”

“So you went back in the morning” Miss Fisher supplied.

“I went and saw him, shot in the head” Annabella pressed her head against her knees “The cup was on the floor, shattered, I thought to do as I was going to initially and remove it, it was the only sign of me having been there, the only clue…”

“And then I saw you” Miss Fisher’s voice had a taint of regret, of pain.

“I couldn’t go back, I told Lorenzo and Nicola what had happened and they decided to monitor the area where I’d given my address, to look around, they said...I didn’t know what they were going to do but I couldn’t...I didn’t know who else to turn to...I’m so sorry, none of you were meant to get involved...they’re good kids, they…” she broke down, crying again “It’s all my fault…”

It was a mess. Her testimony and that of Lena Osmond, possibly other women who worked there and also David Rodgers would help her case. But Jack knew better than anyone that poison wasn’t considered a self-defense type of weapon. It wasn’t seen in court as a spur of the moment kind of defense, it was a calculated risk, and it had been, yes, for a girl who thought had no other option. When abuse was systematic, self-defense could be calculated.

Annabella Moretti would have to be taken into custody. Her brother and friend would be spared, if Miss Henderson, Miss Fisher and himself chose to not present charges against them. But Annabella couldn’t escape the law.

She knew it, as she stood, wavering, weak, tired, halfway leaning on Miss Fisher.

They left Fitzroy in Miss Fisher’s car, leaving the little girls in her house under Mrs. Collins’s care before heading back to City South with the girl who had caused Jack’s identity to get lost, who had been the source of all their anguish in the last days, yet who both him and Miss Fisher felt did not deserve any further punishment than what she had already lived through.

* * *

 

Phryne barely had a foot inside City South when she heard Hugh’s voice calling them.

“Sir, we found the murder weapon” he announced, serious, more in control than she had ever seen him.

She knew, because of what Dot had told her, because of what she had seen herself, that the ‘we’ was merely humility, because it had been Hugh Collins who had taken over the case whenever Jack and herself weren’t able. He had grown so much in the days that had passed, becoming the man Jack always saw inside him, and she hoped some part of Jack would recognize that, even if he didn’t remember.

Phryne called Mac and Jilly while Jack escorted Annabella to the cells. She needed them both to see the girl, in their professional capacities and herself, in a personal one. That girl needed understanding, more than anything.

After that, Phryne joined Jack and Hugh to see the gun. The .38 revolver that had actually killed Edward Rodgers. Phryne shivered, knowing that this was yet another rabbit hole that would end in unjust law enforcement.

“Where did you find it?” Jack asked, examining the weapon.

“I followed your gut feeling, sir, and continued monitoring the Osmond’s area” Hugh explained “I discovered a small, dingy house that we had missed before, and we would have let it pass as regular lodgings, had I not seen a man exiting with a box full of kitchenware”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Collins” Jack passed the gun to Phryne to examine.

“It was a barter house, sir, one of those new ones”

It took some seconds of Jack’s silence and puzzled look for Hugh to remember he wasn’t talking to a Jack who was caught up with the last few years of social and economical strife.

“They’re places to exchange goods, sir, lots of people use them when they have no money to buy things” he explained, patiently “there are quite a few of these small, hidden ones, in old buildings or vacant spaces that don’t have any paperwork or permission but spring from people’s needs, especially in neighborhoods like the Osmond’s”

“So you had missed it in all the reconnaissance patrols...” Phryne asked “Because it didn’t look like a barter house”

“We monitored pawn shops and the biggest known barter spaces, but this one was all but hidden” Hugh nodded.

“If it weren’t for your sharp wit, Hugh Collins” Phryne smiled, proud.

Whatever the case was resolved as and however fair the result, she was happy to see Hugh taking the lead.

“Thank you, Miss” he said, blushing.

“Very impressive, Collins” Jack added “That’s true detective instinct”

At that, Phryne could see the gleam on Hugh’s eyes. Jack was again looking at the weapon, but Hugh was looking at him, with mixed feelings. He missed Jack terribly and Phryne knew exactly how it felt.

“Thank you, sir” he said, his voice weak.

“Could you identify the original owner somehow?” Jack asked.

“There were many witnesses, sir, including the man who received it when offered” he frowned “He said he remembered because she hadn’t asked for anything in return, ‘imagine, in this day and age’, he said, and assumed she wanted to get rid of it”

“She?” Phryne inquired.

“The description he gave, as well as from all the witnesses, matches Lena Osmond, I’m afraid, not her husband” Hugh sighed “She turned in the gun around 6 am, hours after the murder took place”

“Do you think she shot him?” Phryne turned to Jack.

“It’s very unlikely, given the circumstances” he sighed “But it does not help the Osmonds if they were both involved in this together”

“And it surely doesn’t help their daughter either” Phryne added.

“We need to bring them both in, interrogate them separately...and we may have to ask…”

“Jilly is on her way” Phryne interrupted him, understanding his train of thought “She’s an angel and we don’t deserve her”

Hugh nodded to both of them and left the room, taking the weapon for safekeeping and about to order the Osmonds to be escorted in again. The exhaustion in his eyes matched theirs and Phryne wondered how they had let this case take over them like this.

“As it stands, Lena Osmond has more evidence against her than her husband, the evidence implicating him is only circumstantial…” Jack frowned, looking at the vacant table where the gun had been “if two women go to jail for someone like Edward Rodgers, I won’t be able to live with myself”

Phryne acted upon instinct before she could think it over. Her hands were around Jack’s waist, her body against his back, her face leaning on his shoulder. She held him, tightly, as if it was the only way in which they could both stay intact, as if the sole act of holding him would put him back together, all the pieces of Jack that had been scattered, going back to their rightful place.

She wasn’t as romantic as Dot, she didn’t expect things to be like in the stories, for a kiss or a hug or a demonstration of undying love to cure all evil. Nothing about their relationship, even before the accident, had been like a story. It was messy, flawed, filled with imperfections, yet honest, emotional and genuine.

What she missed the most was the _companionship_. She understood it now, what Jack gave her that nobody else had been patient enough to build, careful enough to enjoy. There was a level of understanding, of belonging, that they had cultivated together and it was that what she missed the most.

Something only time could allow. Time that had been taken away from them in one visceral blow.

She felt Jack’s hands on hers, meeting them at his waist. He leaned on her touch, sighing in defeat, giving in to what his body recognized as familiar, even if his mind did not follow, she assumed. How terrifying for Jack Robinson to trust in the inexplicable more so than in his logic. 

He was taking a leap of faith with her, yet again. Like the previous Jack had done, like all the Jacks he had been ever did.

Time and patience. They could do it.

“Thank you” he whispered bashfully.

“I’m honored that you would think I’m doing this for the sole altruistic purpose of making you feel better” she whispered back, on his neck “and not because I have been selfishly needing this all day long”

“So I’m…” he stalled “I’m allowed to hold you back?”

At first, she was about to snort. She was going to take it as a joke, as playful banter, as they used to have. But because of his hesitance, his demeanor, she understood it was a genuine question. And she loved him all the more for it, for asking permission, for being the Jack Robinson he had always been.

“I beg you to” she answered, softly.

He turned around, slowly, as if he felt it was all a charm he needed not to disrupt. She let go of him enough to allow the turn, but kept close, reassuring, expectant. His arms went around her like a piece falling into place, the warmth of familiarity he represented cocooning her at last.

It felt nice, it felt like home.

He leaned his head on hers as his arms held her tight. There was a pause, a silence that she recognized as the heavy, loaded kind that encircled him when he was thinking.

“You think too loudly” she smiled, not letting him go.

“I just...I saw something” he inhaled deeply “I think it was because of your perfume, so close…”

“What was it this time?”

“A restaurant...some trouble...a kiss and your perfume...but you were scared” he leaned away from her a bit, to see her face “You were _terrified_ ”

Phryne sighed. Another of the bad ones. Why was it always the bad ones?

“I wasn’t scared of you, Jack” she offered “ _Never_ of you”

He caressed her cheek and she leaned on his hand.

“I know you can protect yourself” he frowned “but I...I was afraid too, I think...for you”

Phryne leaned on him, her head resting on the crook of his neck.

“I do scare you a lot” she said “I’m sorry”

Jack held her close.

“I reckon it’s part of the deal, isn’t it?” he conceded “And you must have taught me something I was always bad at, I guess”

“What might that be?”

“How to let go” his voice was almost there, so faint, so private.

Phryne remembered late night conversations, their clumsy baby steps while trying to fit together, while learning to reconcile her free nature and his constant need of stability and security.

It had always been half-way with them. They had always met in the middle. Always.

She had learned more about control, about how remaining and being trapped were not the same thing. Both Jack and her new family taught her that, how belonging could come from love and care, not only of a sense of duty, like with her parents, or the misguided violence of someone who wanted her for themselves, like René.

Jack had learned to let loose. He had always seen lack of control as his own fault, as if it was him the one doing things wrong. He blamed himself for his past marriage failing, he blamed himself for failed cases the police couldn’t solve, he blamed himself for Phryne getting hurt. He saw in those things an inability to act properly, the failure of the man who always did the right thing.

Phryne had taught him to give in, to trust that sometimes things didn’t happen the way he wanted or expected, but that didn’t mean he was wrong or had failed. That his insistence of blaming himself for things like her safety or his marriage took out the agency of the women involved.

It was a continuous self discovery, a continuous road towards a healthy, comfortable middle ground. Some days, Phryne had wondered if they were getting anywhere at all. But now, losing the Jack he had been, showed her how far they had advanced together and how good they were for each other. And, for that, she was willing to try again.

Phryne looked up into his eyes, those eyes which now were always asking questions, always wondering.

“We’re good for each other, Jack” she simply said, unable to find words and explanations to convey it all “We always meet in the middle”

There was something in his eyes, a shred of certainty at hearing that, a small veil removed, an understanding. He caressed her cheek, still looking into his eyes, his lips so close to hers. She moved closer, tentatively, but leaving him the space to close the gap, to decide. He closed his eyes. 

“Sir, they’re here!” Hugh’s voice cut the moment in two, reminding them of the awful world crumbling around them, behind the closed door.

Jack let go, his eyes lost in something somber again, his arms releasing her frame.

Still, he took her hand.

“Let’s do this…” he proposed, with more confidence than before “ _Phryne_ ”

* * *

 

Outside of their bubble, everything was chaos.

As they stepped out of the room and into the hall, they found the Osmonds in a state of disarray and Collins trying his best to contain them without harming anyone.

Lena Osmond was in tears, unable to hold herself upright. WPC Jones was at her arm, trying to calm her down. She was even more unkempt and exhausted than how Phryne had described seeing her in the hospital, she was holding something in her hands and Jack was about to order someone to disarm her when he noticed it was not a weapon of any sort but a ragged, small plush doll. He assumed it might have been her daughter’s, which meant the police had escorted her from the hospital. How much worse was this case going to get before it was over?

Thomas Osmond was shouting. He was confessing, unabashed and boisterous, saying that he had murdered Edward Rodgers, that his wife had nothing to do with it, that it had always been him. Collins was holding him from his arms at his attempt to move forcefully towards Jack.

The detective inspector sighed, exhausted.

“Please, if you could just…” Collins was trying to calm them with a kindness Jack could sense was natural for him to show.

There was a part of him that felt content, relieved to have someone at his side, someone he could delegate to, that was also a good person. It was not always the case in the force, he knew well, to find both things coinciding in the same officer.

Jack turned to Miss Fisher, to _Phryne_ , who was just behind him.

“How good of a whistler are you?” he asked.

At that, she smirked, a gesture that was more reassuring to him than it should have, and, with her manicured hands on her red lips, commandeered the attention of the entire room.

“Thank you” Jack nodded “Alright, let me get something out of the way, we don’t intend to cause either of you any harm”

Mrs. Osmond, with the toy in her hands, a small battered sheep, looked at him pleadingly.

“I will send WPC Jones to the hospital, maybe Dr. MacMillan can join her when she’s done here” at that, Phryne nodded “so that they can take care of your girl, we will do all we can to help her”

Mrs. Osmond’s body relaxed somewhat, her incessant shaking still present.

“Don’t worry, love” Jones whispered “I’ll take care of her, promise”

“We will interview both of you again, one at a time, and this time I implore you to tell us the truth” Jack continued “I know what kind of a man Edward Rodgers was, I have an idea of what he might have done to push you both to the edge, but it would do no good to you or your daughter to keep lying, not when we have the weapon under custody”

Thomas Osmond’s eyes opened in shock. It seemed, for his reaction, his deafening silence, that he hadn’t been aware of anything regarding the weapon. That something unfolded without him knowing. They needed to talk to them separately before that changed.

He ordered Collins to escort Mr. Osmond first and, as they did, he glimpsed Miss Henderson and Dr. MacMillan arriving.

Miss Henderson still seemed battered, but one look at the disarray on the room made her jump to what Jack assumed was her professional stance. It was easy to understand how both her and Dr. MacMillan fit together, both as partners and at work, and he wondered if, at some point, Phryne and him had been like that.

“Jones, please escort Miss Henderson, Dr. MacMillan and Mrs. Osmond to where Miss Moretti is” Jack ordered, calmly.

Neither of the Osmonds seemed to comprehend who 'Miss Moretti' was and Jack understood that Annabella had used her false name with them as well. So many lies had been told for protection.

“You saw the girls, Mac?” Phryne asked.

“Yes, they’re with Dot...are the boys still here?” Dr. MacMillan frowned.

“We’ve let them go for now, but I assume they’ll stay around, with Miss Moretti being here” Jack let Collins, Mr. Osmond and Phryne enter the room first “Miss Henderson, I wouldn’t want to impose on you…”

“I’m perfectly fine, Jack, don’t worry” she smiled “It’s time for me to do what I do best”

He nodded and entered the room to find a restless Mr. Osmond barely sitting in the chair with Collins close by. Phryne was already sitting on one of the chairs across from the man, waiting for Jack. It started to feel familiar, to have her calling the shots.

“I did it” Thomas Osmond said as Jack sat down across from him “I shot that bastard, my wife has nothing to do with it”

Jack sighed. His migraine was coming back, intermittent pressure on the side of his head where the scar remained, like the ticking of a clock that was counting the passing of time this case had buried them under.

“Mr. Osmond” Jack begun, as calmly as he was able to appear “You need to understand that, even though you confess, every evidence against you is solely circumstantial, whereas your wife was identified as the one who disposed of the murder weapon”

Again, at the mention of the weapon, Thomas Osmond became restless, confused.

“They’re lying, whoever said that is lying” he slammed his fists on the table, prompting Collins to start approaching him, but Jack shook his head, silently asking to leave him be.

“If that is the case,” he leaned back on his seat, tired “could you tell us where the gun was found?”

At that, he became silent. His eyes were frantically looking around, to each of them, as if he was intending to guess by what their faces expressed what Jack wanted to hear.

“Why don’t you tell us” Phryne interrupted “what happened with Mr. Rodgers that night, then”

Mr. Osmond frowned, angry again.

“I went to the building, to his office, and shot him in the head” he stated “End of story”

“But why?” inquired Jack.

“He was bad to me, treated me poorly” Mr. Osmond crossed his arms “Had always felt insulted by being an inferior when at war, always wanted power but never had the authority...a bloody coward, he was”

That all certainly fit the description of the man, but not the turn of events. It seemed as if there was one person, clearly at the center of the case, that Mr. Osmond was purposefully avoiding to mention.

Jack understood why, but he could not avoid asking.

“Miss Hastings reported that the morning prior to the murder, your wife had a violent altercation with Mr. Rodgers” he stated.

“Violent?” he snarled.

“She apparently threw an ashtray at him” Jack opened the file with the little to no useful details from the witnesses.

“Oh, so you mean, violent towards _him_ ” Mr. Osmond frowned “Of course you do”

“We know what your wife was going through, Thomas” Phryne interjected “What he was doing…”

“You know nothing!” he stood, violently “She did nothing!”

Collins approached the man and was about to force him back to his seat but Jack gestured for him to let him go.

“We are not, under any circumstances, blaming your wife for what he did to her” Jack looked into Thomas Osmond’s eyes, saw the rage and fury they were drowning in.

“Lena is a victim, more so than he is” Phryne said, softly “We want to help her...to help you”

“But we need you to be honest, otherwise it would be for naught” Jack sighed “Your confession isn’t good enough against the case there could be against her, not when there is so much more evidence against her than against you...we need you to tell us the truth”

“We promise we have good intentions, Thomas” Phryne pleaded, honest as only she could be.

It took seconds for Mr. Osmond to even unclench his fists. He was pondering his options, wondering, probably, if he could trust them. The fact that, even under the circumstances and how there were little to no options available, he was still trying to leave his wife completely out of it, was something that made Jack fear the possible outcomes of the case even more.

At last, he sat, defeated, and Jack noticed the exhaustion upon his face yet the tight grip he still held over himself.

“I didn’t know what he was doing to Lena, she never told me” he started, his voice low and his sight lost on the table “I don’t know for how long it was, how much she suffered in silence...she didn’t want to worry me, she knew…”

“She knew you’d go against him” Phryne supplied.

“But that morning, I caught her leaving in a rush...she normally spends the night shift there and leaves very early because I take care of Angela at night and leave for work in the morning...” he let his head fall on his hands, closing his eyes “When I caught her on the hallway, I noticed the marks on her neck, her shirt, and she saw the understanding in my eyes”

Thomas Osmond shook his head.

“I wanted to kill him right there” he looked at Jack “I wanted to go to his office and beat him to death”

“But you didn’t” Jack sentenced.

“Lena convinced me not to” he sighed “She said she was safe, that she was done, that I needed to be ok for Angela too…but I knew it wasn’t over”

Mr. Osmond closed his eyes again and seemed to try to regain some kind of composure. The more he talked, the more it seemed he just needed to get the truth out and be known, just like it had happened with Miss Moretti.

“He didn’t come see me but sent instructions for my treatment” he continued “For how hard the foreman was allowed to push me”

“You mean he didn’t fire you?” Phryne inquired, confused.

At that, Mr. Osmond laughed. A vacant, shallow, terrifying sort of laughter that echoed in the interrogation room, bouncing on the walls.

“Fire me?” he changed his expression, from mock amusement to a hard countenance “the man kept me around so that he could humiliate me, that’s why he took me on, that’s why he accosted Lena, that’s why he taunted me with a salary that made it unfair for me to get but necessary for Angela’s care...it was _personal_ ”

“Because of your days in the military” Jack looked through the papers for that specific information.

“He was the kind of coward who pretends to be anything but” Mr. Osmond declared “He likes to taunt others with his false power, but he can’t fight a fair fight with anyone”

“Miss Moretti...Miss Dennings, as your wife knows her, mentioned he was having financial troubles” Jack said “and that he took the frustration out on the women”

“He took it out on whoever he thought was below him, on whoever he knew couldn’t fight back” Mr. Osmond closed his fists again, his knuckles whitening with the strength he used “He targeted Lena because she is my wife, and I was unable to see it until it was too late, until she was pushed to the limits of what she could bear”

He took his head in his hands again, sobbing.

“I went back home after work, Lena was at the hospital” he continued, between sobs “I knew she’d be there all night, at Angela’s bedside, she wouldn’t return” he scratched his head with his nails, restless “I walked back and forth across the room, knowing I had to go with my wife and child but also that, at this rate, we wouldn’t be able to make ends meet and if I left, he’d make sure I didn’t find work again…”

Mr. Osmond looked up, first at Jack, then at Phryne, his eyes erratic and sad, desperate.

“I don’t know what time it was, but I made sure it was late” he set his fists on the table again “I took my gun, marched to the office...”

“How did you know he’d be in?” asked Jack.

“I’m not a detective like you” he sneered “but knowing how late my wife had been working all this time, that she avoided telling me how far he had gone with her, I assumed it didn’t take long for him to find a replacement for what he really wanted a girl to do in the night shift”

Jack lowered his eyes, pained, and Phryne shivered visibly beside him.

“I knew nobody would be on cleaning duty since Lena was gone, and if there was a girl with him, well…” he sighed “I figured she would want him dead as much as I did”

The statement floated in the room, a truth that had been untold until that moment. Somewhere in the same building, that girl was also waiting for her fate to be decided.

“I found him alone, drinking” he continued “I took aim, saw him realize somewhat what was happening but he was dizzy, like he was out of it” he frowned “I assumed the bastard was drunk, so I took my chance and shot him”

They let the tale settle between them, take place in the room. Everything made sense with the picture of Edward Rodgers and of Thomas Osmond that Jack had been building in his head, at least after his accident. Whatever his initial suspicions had been, they were erased with the crash but, for Phryne’s expression, he supposed she also felt how it all fit. Except for a detail.

“What happened with the weapon?” Jack asked the question that he had been wanting to ask since the start.

“I didn’t know until you said you found it” Mr. Osmond said, all pretenses disappearing from his stance, only exhaustion and grief left on his face “I went straight home, there was blood on me, not much but…” he shivered “I shot people in the war but this was…”

“Different” Jack assented.

“I was restless, afraid, I realized I hadn’t thought things through, I didn’t know if I’d be traced by the police, if I had left clues...once my rage and fear for my family subsided, I realized what I had done…”

He looked at his hands as if he could see in them the imprint of the gun he had used to kill Edward Rodgers.

“I couldn’t go find Lena, I didn’t feel safe” he shook his head “I didn’t want to go to the hospital, to Angela’s side, after having killed a man…” he looked at Jack and Phryne again “I fell asleep, I don’t know how but my body just gave up on me eventually, Lena was there when I woke”

“Did you tell her?” Phryne inquired, careful.

“Yes, but...she knew” he sighed “She saw the blood on my clothes, the gun and knew...I told her I didn’t know what to do and she said she took care of it”

“She got rid of the gun for you” Jack concluded “She purposefully went somewhere where witnesses could place her, so that if we found the weapon we’d trace it back to her...so that the solid evidence would be on her and not on you…her assault to him that morning paired with the witnesses make for a strong case against her whereas for you, it is just circumstantial”

“I didn’t understand it then” a sob interrupted his speech, he had to wait until he could regain enough control to continue “I didn’t know what she was trying to do, that she wanted me to stay...for Angela…”

“So that you didn’t go to jail” Phryne carefully, hesitantly, put her hand over his clenched fist “So that you could still support your girl”

“She thought of everything” tears fell across his cheeks “My brilliant, beautiful wife...she knew that I would find work more easily than her...that I could support Angela best…”

“She sacrificed herself because she knew that, under the current circumstances, her options for work, especially after Edward Rodgers, were too reduced for Angela’s care to be paid for” Phryne sentenced.

“But _I_ did it…” he sobbed “Please, don’t let her pay for it” he took Phryne’s hand “ _Please_ …”

This was what Jack was dreading. Two women, wronged by a man who was considered a victim by the law, but who had victimized them in life, were facing probable jail time when their families couldn’t afford to lose them.

Jack looked at Phryne, her eyes already on his. Nothing about this case was easy. Nothing about this case had ever been easy.

But, at least, he thought, he wasn’t alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update was supposed to happen earlier, but between life and the fact that the subjects on this are very hard to deal with all at once, it took a lot longer than I wanted it to. I hope that, if there's still someone reading this out there, you enjoy it. 
> 
> Klara is here! Another book character I manage to introduce, I’m so happy. Klara is an acquaintance of Phryne who works as a prostitute and knows her way around Fitzroy. She is canonically gay, very fierce, has a youthful appearance but more years than she seems and does not get along with men at all. Mac is mentioned to know her in passing, because she has helped her medically one time or another, so all of that is canon. Shipping her with WPC Jones is my own doing, though, but I couldn’t help myself, their dynamics would be similar to Jack's and Phryne's but with a different edge. Phryne is mentioned to feel rather scared or reticent towards Klara in the books, which I found super interesting and really shows how much power Klara has. As far as I know, she shows up in Flying Too High, Murder on the Ballarat Train and A Question of Death. 
> 
> This chapter was very case-heavy because I wanted to be done with the solving aspect of it. Still, one of my main reasons to set this case as I did was because I wanted to focus more on the "why" and less on the "who". I purposefully chose to tackle the social implications of an economical crisis, especially when many countries are going through them now (including mine), and I researched a lot on how the depression impacted Australia. One of the things that stood out for me, because I feel it's something that happens in every crisis, was the racism and xenophobia against immigrants, especially Italian in this case, who were targeted for letting themselves be exploited at jobs and were blamed for stealing jobs from the locals. Then there's the matter of sexism, always an overlaying factor as well, especially connected with the other. I have, like I mentioned, about 30 pages of notes for this fic, and one section is for the historical background, so there's a lot I'm not saying but I wanted to put out there my reasons for some of these issues to be present here. 
> 
> Annabella is the character that changed the most throughout the fic. I hope that, upon actually meeting her, you're as pleasantly surprised as I was with her (even if I made her up lol so I may be biased). 
> 
> The relationship aspect on this one had to take a bit of a back seat for the exposition, but I tried to showcase the baby steps in the relationship and Jack's evolution with his memories. I really hope this chapter isn't boring for you all. 
> 
> I'm going on a trip on February, I'm gonna have to see when I get the next (AND FINAL) update done, but I'll aim for it not to exceed the next two months, because it'll be a year since this fic started being posted and it needs to be finished. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, if you're here, it means the world to me when I read a comment and find that people still care for this ♥ Happy new year!!!


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